Try our new book recommendation quiz to get recommendations tailored to your preferences.

Summary and Reviews of Monster by Jonathan Kellerman

Monster by Jonathan Kellerman

Monster

An Alex Delaware Novel

by Jonathan Kellerman
  • Critics' Consensus:
  • Readers' Rating:
  • First Published:
  • Dec 1, 1999, 396 pages
  • Paperback:
  • Sep 2000, 416 pages
  • Rate this book

  • Buy This Book

About This Book

Book Summary

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 ...

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Reviews

Media Reviews

The Los Angeles Times
Nobody evokes Los Angeles better than Jonathan Kellerman. . . . Riveting.

The Detroit Free Press
Kellerman doesn't just write psychological thrillers--he owns the genre.

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.

Kirkus Reviews
A psychologist hunts the killer of a psychologist when Dr. Alex Delaware returns after a hiatus that perhaps should have extended beyond one book...It's just that Alex seems so detached now, so distanced. Oh, sure, when LAPD Det. Milo Sturgis summons him, he responds the way a good consulting psychologist should, but gone is that joy of sleuthing once his hallmark....Because he's so much the observer here, Alex amounts to a nonplayer. And no one else in the cast has substance enough to make a long book seem shorter.

Reader Reviews

Addi

Monster was a great book
I liked this book alot. It was really hard to put it down. It kept me intrested until the very end. In a certain way I could relate to Steve. We are close to the same age and I couldn't imagine being on trial for murder. My heart was broken for him. ...   Read More
David Kelman

I found this book to be stunning and hard to put down.
Anonymous

keeps the interest
Brittany

I loved Monster!!
This book was definitely one of my favorite books that I have read. I am 14 and I loved the way it was written. The book definitely kept me reading. I never wanted to put it down. The author, Jonathan Kellerman, knew how to keep the readers ...   Read More

Write your own review!

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Read-Alikes

Read-Alikes Full readalike results are for members only

If you liked Monster, try these:

  • The Hundredth Man jacket

    The Hundredth Man

    by Jack Kerley

    Published 2005

    About this book

    Thundering to a stark and chilling revelation, The Hundredth Man marks the arrival of an author who raises the stakes on every page.

  • The Killing Kind jacket

    The Killing Kind

    by John Connolly

    Published 2003

    About this book

    More by this author

    Charlie Parker has been hired to investigate the untimely death of a brilliant Ph.D. candidate whose death appears to be linked to a mysterious religious community.

We have 4 read-alikes for Monster, but non-members are limited to two results. To see the complete list of this book's read-alikes, you need to be a member.
More books by Jonathan Kellerman
Search read-alikes
How we choose read-alikes

Books with similar themes


Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Top Picks

  • Book Jacket: Model Home
    Model Home
    by Rivers Solomon
    Rivers Solomon's novel Model Home opens with a chilling and mesmerizing line: "Maybe my mother is ...
  • Book Jacket: The Mighty Red
    The Mighty Red
    by Louise Erdrich
    Permit me to break the fourth wall. Like any good reviewer, I aim to analyze a book dispassionately,...
  • Book Jacket: The Palace of Eros
    The Palace of Eros
    by Caro De Robertis
    When male suitors intended for her older sisters spread a rumor that Psyche's beauty surpasses that ...
  • Book Jacket: Rejection
    Rejection
    by Tony Tulathimutte
    A young man identifying as a feminist tumbles down the incel rabbit hole after a lifetime of sexual ...

Members Recommend

  • Book Jacket

    The Naming Song
    by Jedediah Berry

    Miyazaki meets Guillermo del Toro.

  • Book Jacket

    The Bog Wife
    by Kay Chronister

    Five West Virginia siblings unearth secrets after the rupture of a supernatural bargain tying their fate to their land.

Book Club Giveaway!
Win Let Us Descend

Let Us Descend by Jesmyn Ward

Jesmyn Ward imagines the life of an enslaved girl in the years before the Civil War in this instant classic.

Enter

Wordplay

Solve this clue:

J O the B

and be entered to win..