Victims: An Alex Delaware Novel--A Google Preview

photo: from it's Goodreads page; release date is February 28th, 2012

Read the Google preview, which was about half the book, maybe more.  Mostly good stuff so far, though it was like watching an R-rated Law and Order episode.  Very genre, overly episodical, with the minor characters and just-the-facts ma'am mixed with the unnecessary relationship stuff between Delaware and Robin that I'm guessing over 80% of the readers skip over, including me.  Some of the writing, as usual, tries too hard to be brutal chic, but it's still effective, and I can see a little of the tone in my preview, which is a compliment to Kellerman and a bit disconcerting to me.  His minor characters are, as always, stereotypes, yet effective and memorable.  In other words, nothing brand new or groundbreaking here, but you're not going to find that in a series this long, anyhow.  What he does, he does very well.  I'd defy almost anyone to hear a summary of one of his books, without ending or character names, and be able to tell them apart so well that I'd get the actual title of the book from them.  After the fourth or fifth in the series, they all kind of blend together.  That's why I gave up buying every book about two books ago--that's a large series to box up and give away.  They're well-done enough for me to read from the library, though; I might just go to Barnes and Noble or the library and read this one in a few hours while my better half's doing a double.  (And then put it back on the shelf.)  I'm more than a little bothered by the obvious, but still-understated, glee the author takes in his gore and depravity shots, but he knows that's why we read his books, so what choice does he have?  Sometimes his stuff can be so brutal that you feel like taking a shower afterwards, but that doesn't stop us from reading it, does it?  More to come after I read the whole thing...

Mystery--Jonathan Kellerman

I've read every Kellerman, even his nonfiction stuff, like Savage Spawn, and I have to say that his Alex Delaware series now is suffering from the series disease--nothing new to say; no new ways to say it.  I figured out the ending in advance here, as I have with many of his lately, unless the denouement purposely came out of left field.  Every now and then a series writer will strike gold with a late addition to his series, as Robert Parker did with his second April Kyle book, but Mystery is not one of those for Kellerman.  In fact, it hits home more as a depressing look at the bimbos who have to sell themselves in every way possible in L.A., and those who mind it (the victim) and those who don't (the two women at the end).  The victim, it was said, was beautiful, radiant and gorgeous, sexy even when sad, but then she got her face blown off, literally, and later we learn that she did everything it's possible to do with a body.  And one woman, at the very end, is elated when she tells her friend that she spent a night in a hotel room with BOTH of their Sugar Daddies, and the other woman is aghast that she was not invited.  It's a Mystery why I read these anymore, but I'll read the next one, and the one after that.  I've read 'em all, so I can't stop now.  At least it's a quick read, as I read the whole thing in one night, maybe 3 to 3 1/2 hours.  But that just shows you how predictable the writing was, as well.  It's sounding more and more pugnacious and judgmental, too, but I suppose they always were.  Still waiting for the gold nugget late in this series.