Monster (Graphic Novel)
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- $5.99
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- $5.99
Publisher Description
A labyrinth of secrets, revenge, sex, and manipulation come to life in this graphic novel adaptation of a “surprising and complex story of evil” (People) by #1 New York Times bestselling author Jonathan Kellerman.
Two separate murders, strikingly similar in their grisly particulars, bring psychologist Alex Delaware and LAPD detective Milo Sturgis together once again to pool their crime-solving skills in the hunt for a homicidal maniac. But they’re shocked to discover that another deranged murderer may be their best chance of cracking the case. Ardis Peake has been locked away in an asylum for the criminally insane for the last sixteen years, ever since he committed the horrifying massacre as a teenager that made him infamous—and earned him the nickname “Monster.” A pariah even among his fellow inmates, Peake is a lost cause to most of his doctors, and only staff psychologist Claire Argent took a keen interest in treating the caged killer—until she turned up brutally slain in the trunk of her car. It is a death made all the more disturbing by the fact that it was seemingly predicted by Monster.
While Milo searches for a connection between the killing of a struggling actor and Dr. Argent’s nearly identical murder, Alex wonders what spurred the reportedly shy psychologist’s intense fascination with the dangerously insane. But Claire Argent’s personal life proves as barren as the empty home she left behind, and neither her ex-husband nor her colleagues can fill in the cryptic blanks. Only Ardis Peake, whose barely functioning mind lies buried deep in psychosis, seems somehow inexplicably linked to the world from which he’s sealed off. And when he foresees another violent double slaying, Alex and Milo fear that their only hope of finding the truth—and stopping the bloodshed—may be to follow a strange and menacing path into the dark heart and twisted psyche of a madman.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In top form in his latest mystery featuring L.A. forensic psychologist Alex Delaware (who had a bit part in the author's previous novel, Billy Straight), Kellerman devises a deviously twisted, contemporary tale that draws pulsing suspense from the ageless relationship between madness and evil. Delaware teams up with his pal Milo Sturgis, of LAPD Homicide, to track the murderer of Claire Argent, a young doctor who worked at Starkweather Hospital for the Criminally Insane. Argent's badly mutilated body connects her death to the unsolved murder of a young, aspiring actor whose body had been sawed in half. Kellerman masterfully strews the trail of the investigation with crumbs, challenging his heroes (and readers) to distinguish promising clues from red herrings. Argent, who recently left a prime research job to work at Starkweather, led an extremely isolated life that had nothing in common with that of the murdered actor. The Starkweather staff is reticent and unhelpful until a young aide reveals that the doctor had been spending time with an inmate known as the Monster, a mentally deficient man who had been convicted of murdering and mutilating a young family 15 years earlier. Kellerman focuses on Delaware and Sturgis as they probe the hospital's milieu, the Monster's crime, the doctor's troubled and puzzling history and additional murders. A tense climax in the hills above L.A. brings together all the tautly woven threads as Kellerman delivers another chilling look into the dark corners of the human psyche. Literary Guild, Doubleday Book Club and Mystery Guild main selections.
