“Victims” by Jonathan Kellerman – No Cure for Evil

Victims by Jonathan Kellerman is a detective novel starring Alex Delaware, one of the world’s foremost experts in matters relating to homicides. However, when one day he is contacted for assistance by LAPD detective Milo Sturgis, Alex finds himself stumped: an old woman without friends or relatives is found murdered in a very personal and gruesome way. Not a single clue is to be found, apart from a blank page with a huge question mark on it.

With his instinct directing him towards the idea that only a very ill (psychologically-speaking) person could have done this, and so he embarks on a long crusade into the surprisingly secretive and dangerous world of mental treatments, where there are more skeletons than closets to fit them in. 

As he makes his way through the investigation, Alex becomes increasingly worried about the person he is chasing, for they have the kind of evil within them that cannot be cured with pills or injections.

I have to say that reading this novel, up until the end at least, was a real pleasure. Some parts of it are indeed a bit obvious and predictable (by the time you get to the end chances are you will figure out what’s happening), but let’s face it, it takes real geniuses to inject something new in such a saturated literary genre. 

If the mystery itself is the only reason you read detective novels, then I will tell you straight away, pass this book (as a matter of fact, you can pretty much pass up 90% of mystery novels). 

However, if thrills and entertainment that requires little thinking are what you are seeking, then you’ll find that Victims delivers it in massive dozes. Save for the few twists that can be easily predicted, Kellerman does a pretty good job at keeping the reader guessing, and more importantly, he makes you interested in the ultimate conclusion to the story by forcing you to invest yourself into the nature of the crime, the investigation, and the mysterious identity of the culprit.

With everything being said and done, I can safely recommend Victims to fans of Alex Delaware and those who are looking for an entertaining mystery that doesn’t beat around the bush and isn’t too convoluted for its own sake.

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Jonathan Kellerman Personal site Jonathan Kellerman has already written more than thirty crime novels that have turned into bestsellers, creating riveting characters that appeared in numerous books, such as Alex Delaware. Of course, he has dabbled in many different aspects of literature, though he always stuck close to what he knows best: criminality.