LAPD | Seattle Book Mama

4.5 stars rounded upward. My thanks go to Random House Ballantine and NetGalley for the review copy. This book will be available to the public February 6, 2024.

The Ghost Orchid marks the thirty-ninth entry in the Alex Delaware series, one of the longest series in publication. It’s easy to see why it’s lasted so long. The protagonist and side characters are engaging, and the dialogue never loses its sparkle. In this one, Alex has been recovering from a savage beating that he took at the hands of the murderer in our last mystery. Milo, his BFF, is a homicide cop who often hires him to assist the LAPD with cases where a psychologist is needed, but now Milo is so mired in guilt that he can hardly look at his friend. Finally, with a nudge from Delaware’s longtime (and slightly boring) girlfriend, Milo includes him in another case, and we find snappy dialogue that never fails to entertain.

This time it’s a double homicide in Bel Air. The man and woman are found by the pool, naked and dead. The investigation reveals that he is the son of a mega rich European shoe magnate; she is the wife of another rich man, a young, socially awkward member of the ruling elite who isn’t pleased to learn what his wife has been doing when he’s away on business. But then we learn that she was using an assumed name, and so the whole thing is even more mysterious. Who is this dead woman, and who killed her?

At the same time, Alex is engaged to interview a child in his early teens whose adoptive parents have decided to bail. They are divorcing; neither of them wants the kid.

The main storyline is a lot of fun. Everyone enjoys seeing the super-rich suffer. With wealth of this magnitude, there’s no chance any of Kellerman’s readers will identify with the male murder victim or the husband of the female victim, either. The way it’s resolved is believable, and it’s done without any of the prurient or kinky sex that Kellerman inexplicably included for a handful of books in this series a few years back. The half star is withheld from my rating because the other storyline, the one about the teenager, sort of fizzles without going anywhere, and it’s hard to see why he included it in the first place. Kellerman’s career, and this series, were originally launched around crimes where kids were involved, often as witnesses, and those initial books are fascinating. I’d love to see the author return to his roots, write some more episodes that incorporate his credentials and experience in child psychology.

You can read it as a stand alone novel if you choose, but you’ll want to read the others afterward.

Nevertheless, if you are looking for a fast, fun whodunit, this book is a hard one to beat. I highly recommend it to those that love the genre.

This is the 36^th entry into the Alex Delaware series, and it’s still going strong. Lucky me, I read it free. My thanks go to Net Galley and Random House Ballantine for the review copy. It will be available to the public February 2, 2021.

Milo Sturgis, the only gay detective in Los Angeles, has been ordered to take up a very cold case. Money talks, and big money talks loudest. A massively wealthy young woman wants to know what really happened to her mother, and who her biological father was. Ellie Barker was raised by her stepfather, who left her everything, and now that he’s gone, there’s no reason not to go digging for information about the things he didn’t like to talk about. Milo does an eye-roll and reaches for his phone. He thinks it would be better to have a psychologist along, and so once again, Alex joins him on the case.

The case is a complex one, and it also holds a lot of surprises, especially at the end. There’s a side character named Winifred Gaines, “equine laugh” and all, that I enjoy greatly.

I’m going to use this opportunity to share some reflections on the series as a whole. At the outset, clear back in the single digits of the series, the focus was mostly on Alex, and on children. Since Kellerman is a child psychologist, this format gave him an excellent chance to showcase his professional knowledge by incorporating troubled children or adolescents into the plot. I always learned something when he did this, and it was riveting.

Over the course of the series, children have become thinner on the ground. Perhaps this is because Kellerman has used up his reserves, but I don’t think so, somehow. It’s a mighty rich field, and as far as I know, he has it all to himself in terms of long-running series. This time, there are a few references to how children might behave under particular circumstances, and there’s a brief mention of a custody case Alex is working on, which is not central to the plot, but I nevertheless learned something just from the tiny little fragment he snuck into the story. I fervently wish that he would incorporate more child psychology and less kinky sex into his series now. If that makes me sound like a bluestocking, I’ll live with that.

What he has done that I like is build Milo into a more central character. Earlier in the series, Delaware was the central protagonist, and he and his girlfriend Robin—the sort of girlfriend that seems more like a wife—had some ups and downs. They separated at one point, then reunited. It did make them seem more like real people to me. Now, both of them are static and bland, but they provide a neutral backdrop for us to see Milo in action. And I have to admit, it works for me. Right from the get-go, Milo, who has a large appetite, comes lumbering into Alex and Robin’s kitchen, flings open the fridge, and starts making himself the mother of all sandwiches, and I realize that I am smiling widely. What an agreeable character! There’s a point about a third of the way in, where another guy stands up and Milo takes his seat, and “the couch shifted like a lagoon accommodating an ocean liner.” I just love it. There are a couple of allusions toward the end that hint that Milo may be experiencing some health issues that are common to large folk, but there’s no way that this character will die; not unless Kellerman wants to kill of his protagonists as part of an authorial retirement.

When all is said and done, this is a solid mystery from a solid series. Can you read it as a stand-alone? You can. However, you may become addicted and find yourself seeking out the others as well.

Recommended to all that love the genre.