Monster - Softcover

Kellerman, Jonathan

3.93

12,863 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0345413873 ISBN 13: 9780345413871

Publisher: Ballantine Books, 2000

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The ramblings of a well-guarded psychotic patient and mass murderer attract the attention of Dr. Alex Delaware and Detective Milo Sturgis when the killer's words seem to predict a string of serial murders outside the prison walls. Reissue.

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Review:

Consulting psychologist Alex Delaware has a novel approach to crime solving: he uses his training to unlock the secrets in the minds of the victims and jiggles the clues he finds there until the right scenario emerges. So when Alex's LAPD buddy Milo finds the hacked-up body of a woman psychologist named Claire Argent in an abandoned car trunk--the second such murder in eight months--Alex heads for her place of employment: the Starkweather State Hospital for the Criminally Insane.

One of Argent's patients at Starkweather is Ardis "Monster" Peake, imprisoned for the unbelievably brutal murders of his mother and the family she worked for, including a small child and a baby. There is at least one eerie similarity between the mutilation of their bodies and Argent's: in all the bodies, the eyes were taken or destroyed. But Peake, diagnosed as schizophrenic and psychotic, is a well-behaved vegetable due to a steady diet of Thorazine, and he hasn't left the hospital since his incarceration 15 years before. How is it, then, that Claire Argent's assistant, Heidi Ott, swears she heard Peake say, "Dr. A. Bad eyes in a box" soon after he hears only the bare fact of her death? And why does Alex find Peake so empathetic, in spite of his violent past and chillingly vacant mind? When other mutilated bodies turn up, Alex and Milo begin to suspect that the real monster is very much at large. Like Kellerman's 12 previous Alex Delaware mysteries, Monster builds to a big, teeth-clenching bang and ends with some very satisfying surprises. --Barrie Trinkle

Review:

Alert, ironic and absorbing. (Literary Review)

Endlessly intriguing, as good as they come (LITERARY REVIEW)

Coolly intelligent (GQ)

Consulting psychologist Alex Delaware has a novel approach to crime solving: he uses his training to unlock the secrets in the minds of the victims and jiggles the clues he finds there until the right scenario emerges. So when Alex's LAPD buddy Milo find (One of Argent's patients at Starkweather is Ardis "Monster" Peake, imprisoned for the unbelievably brutal murders of his mother and the family she worked for, including a small child and a baby. There is at least one eerie similarity between the mutilatio)

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