Obsession
Jonathan Kellerman
Hardcover
(Ballantine Books, March 27, 2007)
With scores of millions of books in print, translation into two dozen languages, and one of the most popular heroes in contemporary fiction to his name, #1 New York Times bestselling author Jonathan Kellerman is the unequivocal âmaster of the psychological thrillerâ (People). In his newest novel Kellerman delivers a tour de forceâpoignant, dark, and chillingâthat illuminates a shadowy world where impulse rules. Tanya Bigelow was a solemn little girl when Dr. Alex Delaware successfully treated her obsessive-compulsive symptoms. Now, at nineteen, she still seems older than her yearsâbut her problems go beyond hyper-maturity. Patty Bigelow, Tanyaâs aunt and adoptive mother, has made a deathbed confession of murder and urged the young woman to seek Delawareâs help. The doctor recalls Patty as a selfless E.R. nurse struggling to raise a child on her ownâa woman seemingly incapable of the âterrible thingâ she has admitted. But for Tanyaâs peace of mind, Delaware agrees to investigate, and he enlists LAPD detective Milo Sturgis in the search for the phantom victim of a crime that may never have occurred.Armed with only the vaguest details, psychologist and cop follow a trail twisting from L.A.âs sleaziest low-rent districts to its overblown mansions, retracing Patty and Tanyaâs nomadic and increasingly puzzling life to the doorsteps of a sullen heroin addict; a randy real-estate broker; and a brilliant, enigmatic physics student. Suddenly a very real murder tears open a terrifying tunnel into the past, where secretsâand bodiesâare buried. As the tension mounts, Delaware and Sturgis uncover a tangled history of desperation, vengeance, and deathâa legacy of evil that refuses to die. Dramatic, action-packed, and filled with the psychological detail that only Jonathan Kellerman can provide, Obsession is a whodunit, a whydunitâand something unique: a did-it-even-happen? This is Kellerman at his heart-racing best.