Rage

Sometimes Kellerman gets lost in the demons he conjures up. As a reader I need to care at least a little about the victims or give me a bad guy that's charismatic so I can at least enjoy the ride. Rage is dark from beginning to end. Creepy and dark.

The Devil's waltz was creepy and dark but had a intriguing villain and plot. Rage's plot is completely crushed under all the weight of the bad and disgusting things that are revealed. This is too much reality intruding in my murder mystery for me. I have a high threshold but enough is enough. I don't mind open ended conclusion or if the bad characters get away with it. I love Minette Walters the queen of the weird endings and bad guys getting away with it for me. I mind when things don't make show more sense in the end.

For me, the novel jumped the shark when Alex and Milo discover that the bad guy gets the young girls he has in foster care pregnant and gets them to an abortion clinic and gets off on it. This is my limit. For Delaware and Milo to do nothing was out of character. In the end you have no idea why the creep had the young girl murdered by the two boys. Because she was his and he couldn't stand that? It's all theories and conjunctures. Even the execution of the bad guy is botched up in a way because it's again all conjunctures about the motivations of the executioners.
Don't get me started on Robin. I mean, please, no. I like Allison. Robin gets on my nerves with oh, I have this new man in my life but I still want you Alex. At least Allison is honest about her desires and what she wants. I'm a bit miffed that Kellerman is having Robin back in Alex's life. A little miffed. show less

Pre-review thoughts
Again Jonathan Kellerman gives us a brutal, winner of a thriller. It opens with a classic line where Alex, while watching a baseball game, gets a call from a murderer who has been released. Juveniles when they committed the crime of killing a 2 year old child, the mystery starts after the fact when the boy (now a man) is found dead. The story keeps adding on more horrors, and more victims, in a truly sick psychopathic villain who stands out unique in the many ways he's really sick (and it's more than straightforward murder, blech). A different ending with this type where the two aren't always in the pursuit of law if justice has been served already. It's a good mystery with many layers; the villain is known for show more awhile, but more investigating and leads are covered for awhile before the ending. show less

I read Jonathan Kellerman books years ago and really liked them, and then for some reason stopped. This one I got as an audio book, and find that, for me, Kellerman is perfect for listening-in-the-car. The dialogue is engaging, very interesting and clips along and there is enough of it that it simplifies trying to keep the somewhat complicated plot in mind. This story was bloody and sad, but certainly held my attention and had me rooting for the good guys and "agin" the villain. I thought the ending,which was criticized by some other readers, indeed left a lot of things up in the air, but was very satisfying. I liked Rage so much as an audio read that I went out and bought three more Alex Delaware audio books.

In a host of consecutive bestsellers, Jonathan Kellerman has kept readers spellbound with the intense, psychologically acute adventures of Dr. Alex Delaware-and with excursions through the raw underside of L.A. and the coldest alleys of the criminal mind. Rage offers a powerful new case in point, as Delaware and LAPD homicide detective Milo Sturgis revisit a horrifying crime from the past that has taken on shocking and deadly new dimensions. Troy Turner and Rand Duchay were barely teenagers when they kidnapped and murdered a younger child. Troy, a remorseless sociopath, died violently behind bars. But the hulking, slow-witted Rand managed to survive his stretch. Now, at age twenty-one, he's emerged a haunted, rootless young man with a show more pressing need: to talk-once again-with psychologist Alex Delaware. But the young killer comes to a brutal end, that conversation never takes place. Has karma caught up with Rand? Or has someone waited for eight patient years to dine on ice-cold revenge? Both seem strong possibilities to Sturgis, but Delaware's suspicions run deeper… and darker. Because fear in the voice of the grownup Rand Duchay-and his eerie final words to Alex: "I'm not a bad person"-betray untold secrets. Buried revelations so horrendous, and so damning, they're worth killing for. As Delaware and Sturgis retrace their steps through a grisly murder case that devastated a community, they discover a chilling legacy of madness, suicide, and multiple killings left in its wake-and even uglier truths waiting to be unearthed. And the nearer they come to understanding an unspeakable crime, the more harrowingly close they get to unmasking a monster hiding in plain sight. Rage finds Jonathan Kellerman in phenomenal form-orchestrating a relentlessly suspenseful, devilishly unpredictable plot to a finale as stunning and thought-provoking as it is satisfying. show less

Rage is a difficult book to plow through. Anytime child molestation, child rape, infidelity, drugs and murder are involved, it is all difficult subject matter to read about but all together makes it even more difficult. This book makes one think about the law enforcement and child psychiatrists desire to keep on performing in their careers. How does one continue? Probably catching the people who did it, makes the professionals able to continue. Four stars were given to this book in this review.

This is the latest entry in the Delaware series. Alex gets a phone call from a young man who, eight years earlier, killed a girl toddler along with another boy, since murdered himself. He's spent the intervening time in the California Youth Authority. Now he calls Alex, apparently looking for some sort of absolution. He never shows up for the meeting with Alex, though, and then the next day he is informed that the guy has been killed, and he and Milo go to work trying to find out who killed him. The further they dig into the case, the more they discover - and the more they talk. Alex and Milo have long, long, conversations in this book that only complicate the plot rather than enlighten the reader.

Alex is still moping around over his show more ex Robin. He's got a new love interest in this story, but it is clear it is not going anywhere. Spike, the English bulldog who was a really important character in previous novels, has gone with Robin. He's now aging and not well. Maybe this will bring them back together. Whatever - I hope he pulls himself together soon.

There is nothing really wrong with this book, but there's nothing really right with it either. I have read almost all of the Alex Delaware books,and most of Kellerman's other works, and they seem to be on a downhill trend. There's a lot of legwork where Kellerman seemed to be establishing his usual tightly-knit plot, and then it all just fell apart at the end. The story just stops - there's no tying up of loose ends, no closure.

Not one of his better efforts - and disappointing from an author far more talented than is on show here. show less

Very confused motivations. Good for 1 time through, but not good enough for the number of re-reads it would take to sort it all out. Very nasty premise. Lots of bad sexual abuse. Delaware is at his best when he ignores his love interests--as the mythic detective should.