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Critics' Opinion:
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First Published:
Dec 1999, 396 pages
Paperback:
Sep 2000, 416 pages
With Monster's incomparably deft characterizations and dazzlingly dark plot twists, Jonathan Kellerman further enhances his literary position as master of the psychological thriller.
Alex Delaware is back! And in Jonathan Kellerman's riveting and ingenious new novel, Monster, he faces one of the most grisly and baffling mysteries of his career: How can a nonfunctional psychotic locked up in a supposedly secure institution for homicidal madmen predict brutal murders in the outside world? Delaware and his friend and partner Detective Milo Sturgis must penetrate this enigma in order to stop the horrific killings.
A marginal actor is found dead in a car trunk, sawn in half. Months later, a psychologist at a hospital for the criminally insane is discovered murdered and mutilated in a tantalizingly similar way. When reports of an inmate's incoherent ramblings begin to make frightening sense as predictions of yet more slayings, Delaware and Sturgis are drawn into a web of family secrets, vengeance, and manipulation--both inside the asylum and on the streets of L.A., where death, drugs, and sex are marketed as commodities. The climactic discovery they make as they race to prevent more killings gives fresh and terrifying meaning to the concept of monstrosity.
With Monster's incomparably deft characterizations and dazzlingly dark plot twists, Jonathan Kellerman further enhances his literary position as master of the psychological thriller.
Chapter 1
The giant knew Richard Nixon.
Towering, yellow-haired, grizzled, a listing mountain in khaki twill, he limped
closer, and Milo tightened up. I looked to Frank Dollard for a cue. Dollard
appeared untroubled, meaty arms at his sides, mouth serene under the tobaccoed
gray mustache. His eyes were slits, but they'd been that way at the main gate.
The giant belched out a bass laugh and brushed greasy hair away from his eyes.
His beard was a corn-colored ruin. I could smell him now, vinegarish, hormonally
charged. He had to be six- eight, three hundred. The shadow he threw on the dirt
was ash-colored, amoebic, broad enough to shade us.
He took another lurching step, and this time Frank Dollard's right arm shot out.
The huge man didn't seem to notice, just stood there with Dollard's limb flung
across his waist. Maybe a dozen other men in khaki were out on the yard, most of
them standing still, a few others pacing, rocking, faces pressed against the
...
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