A Cold Heart

An interesting take on relationships, Alex and Milo, and Petra introduced in an earlier, standalone novel. Also converging is the world of art in its many guises: jazz and classical performances, seedy nightclubs and struggling art galleries, and the fan-zines.

In this case, a sequence of murders occur to artists who are making professional comebacks in all these fields that Petra begins to investigate with her new partner, the silent and stoic Eric. She calls in Milo and Alex, and each of them handles seemingly innocuous details of these cases in their own unique way.

The point-of-view of each Petra and Alex chapters are separate, and the aspects of the cases they work are clear and unmuddied. In addition to the police procedural show more chapters there are the psychological insights into the killers' motives: as we trace a car at a junkyard, the questions begin about the young man who abandoned it and what happened in his family to make him commit these crimes.

And of course there is the grit of after-hours Los Angeles alongside the privilege and glitter of Century Center and Bristol. And academia and hard-edged police work and trying to work through personal relationships to humanize the main characters. show less

A long forgotten blues guitar player is attempting a comeback when he is brutally murdered outside the club he is playing at. After a police detective see some superficial relationships between this killing and murders of other artists he calls in Alex Delaware, LA psychologist and part-time police consultant. This is the 17th Delaware book but I've only read a few. The stories are pretty good but Delaware comes across to me as a bit whiny in his personal life.

This was not one of the best Alex Delaware books but I still enjoyed it. Petra makes another appearance in this book with a new partner Eric. Alex is with a new love interest and Robin is living with a new man. Lots to complicate their personal lives.

There are several murders in and around the LA area as well as others around the country that Alex thinks might be related. Petra is trying to solve one, Milo another and others have given up on some of theirs or put them down to things like drugs. There are many heads required to solve this one.

Overall I found this to be okay, however I found that the first person narrative from a mixture of characters detracted from the ease of reading. For example one chapter began "When I left Robin's house..." however you have no idea who the "I" is as the last chapter was a different character in a different location and there are no indicative titles per chapter.

In terms of the plot, it was actually quite good, it wasn't one of those books where you already know who did it before your a quarter of the way through so it has that going for it.

“The witness remembers it like this:…”

The LAPD are perplexed when a middle-aged blues guitarist and a promising young artist with a druggy past are murdered in quick succession. Petra Conner, reserved detective with a recent break-up, and Alex Delaware, ex-police psychologist, are both intrigued by the cases and feel duty-bound to follow them up.

This had the potential to be a great thriller – two sort-of linked cases, both of which are pretty cold, with tenacious investigators, and all sorts of crazy characters lurking on the sidelines. The main characters are strong, tough people with recent personal relationship issues but no bizarre behaviour which can be so limiting in police procedurals.

HOWEVER.

The two main characters show more (ignoring Milo, who according the blurb is the lynchpin but I didn’t even know who he was when I read the blurb again to do this review) are so similar, with such similar recent relationship troubles, and both perspectives are told in the first person singular, that I actually got the characters mixed up and was really confused when they seemed to be hanging out with people they didn’t know.

Ergo – narrative weakness. And when the plot hadn’t grabbed me by page 100 enough to overcome the extremely confusing double/same character issue, on the DNF list it went. show less

I enjoyed this book in the strangest of ways. It was like a TV show I could just "watch" and veg out on and yet I was reading. I found myself stopping every so often and thinking, "Wait, I'm reading?!" and then I would get right back into it. I thought it was really good.

Unfortunately, I didn't care for the ending and I thought it was terribly weak. The last two chapters weren't necessary but as it's part of a series, I think, I guess they were needed in that sense.

A passable entry in the Alex Delaware series; not horrible, but not something to highly recommend.Spoiler alert - I'm glad Robin and Alex are no longer together, as I never liked her from the beginning ... but I can't help but feel that the author is attempting to paint the newest love interest in an unflattering light. This became evident in the way he described how she looked while sleeping. Perhaps this is a petty issue, but my dislike of Robin is such that anyone other than her is greatly appreciated - but the author seems to feel differently. So I can't help but wonder ... if Kellerman feels that way about Robin, then why even create the final separation between Alex and Robin in the first place - unless it was a desperate attempt show more to breathe fresh life into a series that has become just 'so-so'. show less