Unnatural History by Jonathan Kellerman
| Unnatural History by Jonathan Kellerman | |
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| Category: Crime | |
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Reviewer: Sue Magee
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| Summary: Altruism gone wrong. It might be number 38 in the series but it's still a fresh and invesntive read. Recommended. | |
| Buy? Yes | Borrow? Yes |
| Pages: 320 | Date: February 2023 |
| Publisher: Century | |
| External links: Author's website | |
| ISBN: 978-1529125962 | |
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Donny Klement was a photographer. Well, it was Adonis, actually, but Donny had stuck unless he got Danny but whichever - it's past tense as his PA found him dead in his bed. Three shots were placed neatly through his heart. The PA, Mel Gornick, is distraught and it falls to psychologist Alex Delaware to calm her down whilst Lieutenant Milo Sturgis gets more agitated as he tries to establish what's happened. Donny had just finished a series of photographs called The Wishers. He'd taken eight homeless people off the streets and asked them what they'd really like to be. They were then dressed up as their fantasy, photographed and sent on their way with a generous gift in dollars.
Donny was naive. He didn't even take what seemed like basic precautions for his own safety and it didn't seem unreasonable to assume that one of the homeless had decided to help himself to some more of the cash. The images had received a great deal of media attention: for some it was genius. Others thought that it was crass exploitation to photograph homeless people living out their 'dreams'. Donny wasn't that sensitive: he had a very strange family background. His father, billionaire Victor Klement, had a history of marrying, fathering a child and then divorcing - all within two or three years. There was never more than one child from each union and contact between the families was minimal to non-existent. Could one of the other children have decided that if Donny was out of the way his own share of the billions would be substantially increased when Victor died? But where was Victor? There didn't even seem to be a photograph of him.
When you read Jonathan Kellerman you know exactly what you're going to get. The plot will be twisty and you're unlikely to get anywhere near working out what has happened. You'll get a hair-raising ride through Los Angeles and you'll know a lot more about the undesirable areas than you ever wanted to know. Then you'll get the brilliant dialogue between Delaware and Sturgis and some excellent insights into the minds of the people involved. It's all cracking stuff and this latest book is no disappointment. Alex and Milo don't seem to have aged over all the years I've been reading but we can probably forgive them for that. It's a small price to pay for a very good read.
I'd like to thank the publishers for sending a copy to the Bookbag.
For an insight into what law enforcement in the Los Angeles area is really like, have a look at Black, White, and Gray All Over: A Black Man's Odyssey in Life and Law Enforcement by Frederick Reynolds.
Jonathan Kellerman's Alex Delaware Series in Chronological Order
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