OBSESSION: An Alex Delaware Novel
Jonathan Kellerman
Ballantine Books
Psychological Thriller
ISBN-10: 0345452631
ISBN-13: 9780345452634

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Jonathan Kellerman has been gathering accolades for quite some time, even as he is well into his third decade of writing intelligent, suspenseful works and shows no signs of slowing down. With each new book, he continues to exceed the standards he sets for himself since his last. OBSESSION, his latest Alex Delaware novel, continues this pattern.

Initially, OBSESSION involves Delaware's treatment of Tanya Bigelow, a 19-year-old who had been seeing the good doctor for over a decade for her obsessive-compulsive disorder. The reason for Tanya's return is a deathbed confession made by her aunt and adoptive mother, Patty, who apparently committed a murder in the past and urged Tanya to seek Delaware's help. His recollection of Patty was of a gentle, dedicated woman incapable of such an act. Nonetheless, he agrees to help Tanya, enlisting the assistance of the taciturn Milo Sturgis to trace what may be the nonexistent victim of a crime that never happened.

Kellerman creates a fascinating description of police procedure while, at the same time, giving readers a new glimpse of the somewhat rumpled, grumpy but always loyal Sturgis, an L.A. police detective who happens to be gay. Kellerman chooses to develop and reveal Sturgis's personality by degrees, making his friendship with Delaware unlikely for a number of reasons --- haberdashery, philosophy, worldview --- as opposed to an odd couple scenario based entirely on gender preference.

It is Sturgis's personality that ultimately carries the reader through OBSESSION, even as Kellerman tells a fascinating tale of a deed committed with the best of intentions but that many years later places an innocent in terrible danger. That same deed, however, also provides a means by which happiness is achieved, and Kellerman pulls this together so neatly that one can only marvel at how it is done.

OBSESSION is good, solid police work --- performed in large part by a new and interesting character in the Delaware mythos --- that leads to the book's conclusion and to the ultimate answer as to how the acts of the past can affect the affairs of the present in ways that can never be predicted or planned ahead.

Reportedly, Kellerman has plotted enough Delaware novels to keep him writing for a very long time. Based on the strength of OBSESSION and what has gone before, I hope I'm still around to read them all.

   --- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub

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