Jonathan Kellerman's new Alex Delaware novel has a higher body count and is bloodier than usual. Approaching the gothic in its high camp perspective, it features a mental hospital called Starkweather, a chief suspect named Ardis Peake, and a cast of supporting grotesques to rival any that haunted the pages of Cold Comfort Farm or the Gormenghast trilogy.
The story kicks off when Peake, a non-functioning psychotic locked away in a supposedly secure institution, begins describing a series of brutal murders as they take place in the outside world. Delaware, with the help, as usual, of LAPD Detective Milo Sturgis, is called in to make sense of what is going on, and is soon up to his armpits in violence, gore and dismembered bodies.
This is Thomas Harris terrain and is extremely well done, but I have to say I prefer Delaware when the violence is more offstage and the psychological investigation is up-front. However, Kellerman never fails to deliver a strong storyline, believable characters - in this case, ones you really wouldn't want to know - and a gasp-inducing climax. If Hannibal Lecter is your hero-villain, then the baddie here is fit to share a human liver or two with him.