Showing results by author "Jonathan Kellerman" in Thriller & Suspense

When the phone rings in the middle of the night, child psychologist Alex Delaware does not hesitate. Driving through the dream-lit San Fernando Valley, Alex rushes to Jamey Cadmus, the patient he had failed five years before - and who now calls with a bizarre cry for help. But by the time Alex reaches Canyon Oaks Psychiatric Hospital, Jamey is gone, surfacing a day later in the hands of the police, who believe Jamey is the infamous Lavender Slasher, a psychotic serial killer. Wooed by a high-powered attorney to build a defense, Alex will get a chance to do what he couldn't five years ago.

Sharon Ransom is the most beautiful woman in the room; she’s also the most troubled. So when former lover psychologist Alex Delaware bumps into her at a lavish LA cocktail party, though still attracted to her, fear of reviving unhappy memories prevents him from offering the help she seems so desperate for. Hours later, Sharon’s body is discovered with a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Tortured by guilt, Alex wants answers.

The new masterfully plotted, standalone pyschological thriller from number-one best seller Jonathan Kellerman, featuring tough, brilliant young pyschologist Grace Blades, a former student of Alex Delaware. A brilliant and dedicated psychologist, Grace Blades has a gift for treating troubled souls and tormented psyches - because she bears her own invisible scars.

An uninvited guest. A missing identity. A trail of deadly secrets. When a horrified bridesmaid finds the body of a young woman at a wedding reception, it makes the bride and groom’s choice of a Saints and Sinners theme all the more macabre. There are no means of identification and nobody knows the victim. The bride is convinced someone is trying to sabotage her big day. The groom is sure it’s a dreadful mistake. It’s up to brilliant psychologist Alex Delaware and LAPD Lieutenant Milo Sturgis to uncover the truth.

Responding to a call at a mansion in an East Bay neighbourhood, Deputy Coroner Clay Edison comes upon the body of Dr Walter Rennert, a controversial Berkeley psychologist, sprawled at the foot of his stairs. There are no wounds and no signs of intrusion or struggle. Clay knows the obvious diagnosis is natural death. But 10 years ago, Rennert's partner was found dead, and to this day the crime remains unsolved.

Clay Edison gets the call in the middle of the night, and it's a bad one. A party in Oakland, feuding neighbours, a wild crowd in the street. Two guns, firing at random, spreading chaos and death. Nobody knows the body count yet. It's going to be a long night for Clay - longer than he ever could have imagined. Because when the dust settles, there's a victim who can't be accounted for. A young woman, strangled instead of shot, without ID and a stranger to all. Clay's journey to give her a name and bring her justice will lead him into a bizarre world where right and wrong begin to blur.

Dylan Meserve and Michaela Brand, young lovers and fellow acting students, vanish on the way home from a rehearsal. Three days later, they are found in the remote mountains of Malibu, battered and terrified. They've had a harrowing ordeal: held at gunpoint by a sadistic abductor who subjected them to a horrific regime of confinement, starvation, and assault. But doubts arise about their story and, as forensic details unfold, the abduction is exposed as a hoax.

In an upscale Bel Air property, two lovers are found dead in a swimming pool. The man is the playboy heir to a business empire, and the woman is his even wealthier married neighbour. An illicit affair is the perfect motive. But the house is untouched - no forced entry, no forensic evidence - and so LAPD homicide lieutenant Milo Sturgis and asks psychologist Alex Delaware to help unpick the case. It quickly becomes clear that both victims had troubled pasts. Now Alex and Milo must confront LA's darkest side as they unravel a trail of deadly secrets.

A young woman who disappeared into the black night; a retired school teacher stabbed to death in broad daylight and two women butchered in a beauty parlour. Three murder cases, linked only by a perplexing lack of motive. But then LAPD detective Milo Sturgis and psychologist Alex Delaware are called to the scene of a bizarre "crime". A stolen car has been anonymously returned to its owner, undamaged and unblemished - except for a tiny, solitary bloodstain.

Dr. Morton Handler practiced a strange brand of psychiatry. Among his specialties were fraud, extortion, and sexual manipulation. Handler paid for his sins when he was brutally murdered in his luxurious Pacific Palisades apartment. The police have no leads, but they do have one possible witness: seven-year-old Melody Quinn.

They call the ancient hills of Jerusalem the butcher's theater. Here, upon this bloodstained stage, a faceless killer performs his violent specialty: The first to die brutally is a fifteen-year-old girl. She is drained of blood, then carefully bathed and shrouded in white. Precisely one week later, a second victim is found.

When a photographer is found inside an LA warehouse slumped in bed, shot to death, it sets in motion a complex and dangerous case for Lieutenant Milo Sturgis and Psychologist Alex Delaware. The victim had just received rave media attention for his latest project—images of homeless people living out their 'dreams'. But there were many who saw the work as crass exploitation. Did anger turn to homicidal rage? Or do the roots of violence reach down to the victim's own family? As new murders arise, Alex and Milo must peel back the layers of the case.

When coroner-turned-private investigator Clay Edison is approached to work on a fraud case, he uncovers more than he bargained before: a decades-old scheme targeting the vulnerable. His investigation leads him to a strange town in the remote California wilderness where the residents don't care much for outsiders. They certainly don't like Clay asking questions. And they'll do just about anything to keep him quiet.

Ellie Barker is a self-made millionaire by the age of 40 and is obsessed with reopening the coldest of cases: the decades-old death of the mother she never knew. She hires LAPD Homicide Lieutenant Milo Sturgis to help. Twenty-five years ago Ellie's mother was found with a bullet in her head in a torched Cadillac that has overturned on infamously treacherous Mulholland Drive. No physical evidence, no witnesses, no apparent motive. And a slew of detectives have already worked the job and failed.

At 5 a.m. in the upscale neighbourhood of Westwood Village, two removal men are making a routine pick-up when they make a fatal hit. It's a man - who appeared from nowhere - naked and with no means of identification. Not long after, a woman is found dead in a house nearby, which neighbours suspect to be a brothel. Could the man have come from there? When LAPD homicide lieutenant Milo Sturgis calls brilliant psychologist Alex Delaware is called to the scene, the case gets even more complicated.

In the middle of the night, Detective Lieutenant Milo Sturgis is called to a Westside hospital. A young woman has been left dead at the entrance to the E.R. Milo soon identifies the victim as an aspiring actress, and evidence points him in the direction of a Hollywood misfit with an arrest record. Before they can arrest the suspect, however, he is found shot dead on his balcony. Milo calls brilliant psychologist Alex Delaware to help unpick the case. But as more bodies appear, linked only by the rifle used to kill them, the more complicated it becomes.

In this thrilling new blockbuster from number-one best seller Jonathan Kellerman, psychologist sleuth Alex Delaware becomes the target of a vengeful killer while a baby goes missing. Well used to elevated emotions, psychologist Alex Delaware shrugs off a joking death threat from beautiful Beverly Hills physician Constance Sykes, whose attempt to secure legal custody of her baby niece is thwarted by Alex's forthright report to the court. Alex plays down the threat until LAPD's Milo Sturgis rushes to his side with the shocking word on the street that a hit's been taken out on him.

Deputy Coroner Clay Edison is juggling a new baby who won’t sleep with working the graveyard shift. For once he’s trying to keep things simple. When infant remains are found by developers demolishing a local park, a devastating cold case is brought back to light. Clay has barely begun to investigate when he receives a call from a man who thinks the remains could belong to his sister – who went missing 50 years ago. Now Clay is locked in a relentless search that will unearth a web of violence, secrets and betrayal.

A brilliant criminal psychologist, Alex works with the police to help solve the most complex of crimes in Los Angeles, city of illusions, glamour and infamy. An affluent family returns home from Sunday dinner only to find the murdered and brutalised corpse of a total stranger in their house. This baffling, twisted tale tests Alex and Milo to their intellectual and emotional limits.

One night of hedonism. Four counts of murder. A run-down mansion nestled between Beverley Hills and the San Fernando Valley is leased out for one night to house a party big enough to herald the end of days. When a limo is discovered in the grounds of the house the morning after with four dead bodies inside, a mind-bending case begins.