Serpentine
An Alex Delaware Novel
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4.1 • 110 Ratings
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The iconic thriller series that inspired the upcoming streaming show on Prime Video, in development now!
Psychologist Alex Delaware and detective Milo Sturgis search for answers to a brutal, decades-old crime in this electrifying psychological novel from the master of suspense.
LAPD homicide lieutenant Milo Sturgis is a master detective. He has a near-perfect solve rate and he’s written his own rule book. Some of those successes—the toughest ones—have involved his best friend, the brilliant psychologist Alex Delaware. But Milo doesn’t call Alex in unless cases are “different.”
This murder warrants an immediate call. Milo’s independence has been compromised as never before, as the department pressures him to cater to the demands of a mogul: a hard-to-fathom, megarich young woman who is obsessed with reopening the coldest of cases—the decades-old death of the mother she never knew.
The facts describe a likely loser: a mysterious woman found with a bullet in her head in a torched Cadillac that has overturned on infamously treacherous Mulholland Drive. No physical evidence, no witnesses, no apparent motive. And a slew of detectives have already worked the case and failed. But as Delaware and Sturgis begin digging, the mist begins to lift. Too many coincidences. Facts turn out to be anything but. And as they soon discover, very real threats lurking in the present.
This is Delaware/Sturgis at their best: traversing the beautiful but forbidding place known as Los Angeles and exhuming the past in order to bring a vicious killer to justice.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Forensic psychologist Alex Delaware has caught one hot mess of a cold case. Money talks in L.A., which is how millionaire sportswear designer Ellie Barker just got her mother’s nearly 40-year-old murder investigation reopened. When the seemingly unsolvable cold case lands on detective Milo Sturgis’ desk, he loops in his old friend Alex. We enjoyed the fast-paced banter between buttoned-up Alex and outgoing Milo, who spend a lot of time arguing over who’s Holmes and who’s Watson. As the duo tries to solve the crime, they give us a fascinating look into Los Angeles, where movie star mansions loom just a stone’s throw from seedy bungalows. The closer the pair gets to the disturbing truth, the more the tension ratchets up. Jonathan Kellerman fills this installment of his long-running series with as many dangerous curves as Mulholland Drive, so buckle up and enjoy the ride.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Edgar winner Kellerman's top-notch 36th Alex Delaware novel (after 2020's The Museum of Desire), a cold case preoccupies the L.A. consulting psychologist and his friend and colleague, Lt. Milo Sturgis of the LAPD: the death of Dorothy Swoboda, whose burned body was found in a car below Mulholland Drive 36 years earlier. Dorothy's 39-year-old daughter, Ellie Barker, who recently sold her lucrative exercise wear business for millions, remains haunted by the loss of her mother, who abandoned her when she was three. Now Ellie wants an explanation for what one report at the time called a murder and another a one-vehicle accident. Armed with the thinnest of case files, Milo and Alex uncover a disturbing number of murders that seem related to Dorothy, and they realize that the killing spree might not yet be over. Kellerman maintains pace and suspense through the interactions of the characters witnesses, detectives, relatives of the victims all of whom are rendered in striking and precise detail. This entry is pure pleasure, intelligently delivered.
Customer Reviews
Interesting but not outstanding
Nothing outstanding. I prefer when you can follow along with Delaware’s thought process- in this one the answers kind of come out of the blue- but not as a shocking twist. Great characters in though.