Jonathan Kellerman's Bones? Naaahhhh....
Amazon says:
Banes & Noble thinks:
|
Author: Jonathan Kellerman
Title: Bones Genre: mystery A tiny enclave sandwiched between pricey high-rise condos and pricey beachfront "cottages," the Bird Marsh rarely caught more than a glance from the tens of thousands of Angelenos who motored by in stop-and-go traffic every day. That was about to change; change when the first body was found along one of its narrow trails. Poor, pretty Selena Bass; sightless eyes staring east and her right arm terminated just above the wrist: so much for her career as a concert pianist. When two more bodies - also sightless, also handless - turn up in the LAPD's search of the marsh; homicide's Milo Sturgis gets a nod from upstairs to lend a hand (groan) to the clueless rookie who'd been on call when the Bass case was reported. And wherever Lieutenant Sturgis goes, Alex Delaware won't be far behind, you know? It's patently obvious to Milo and to Moses Reed, the rookie detective (happily accepting a chance to play second banana to the great Milo Sturgis) that the butler did it. Well, not exactly the butler, but the caretaker at the vast estate where the late, lovely Selena had been giving piano lessons. He's got the record, he's nervous, and he seems to be bald (just like the man glimpsed hanging around Selena by her neighbor a few days before she died). Travis Huck, né Eddie Huckstadter, is headed for the little steel room at Folsom when Milo and Moses get done with him - just as soon as the daring duo figures out where he's disappeared to. But the contemplative, perceptive Dr. Delaware isn't quite certain Huck is the right Mark Twain character. After all, there are at least a few other bald men in LA... Jonathan Kellerman's twenty-third Alex Delaware novel, Bones, finds Dr. Delaware in a contemplative mood. All is well in his relationship with the robust Robin, Blanche the bulldog gives him sloppy kisses, and he wants not for money (though he really needs to get rid of that ancient Caddy). Perhaps Delaware's contemplative mood is the reason why Bones moves along at a snail's pace, and why the two hundred pages spent talking about what a wonderful suspect Travis Huck has turned out to be are so casually overturned in the final reel. Not that anyone who's read a Delaware novel before would be fooled by the apparent ease with which Milo, Moses, and Alex turn up a "person of interest" and spin themselves a fine case against him - after all, a murder mystery without a plot twist wouldn't be much of a mystery, now would it? So the reader is left to attempt to figure out who's the real killer even as the terrific trio build a nearly airtight case against the missing caretaker. Along the way, they get a bit of help from the good old Coincidence Fairy: honest, there are more than twelve million people in greater LA; so why do the tiny number who know Huck keep stumbling over each other? Is it just me, or does it seem that ever since Kellerman went to one-word titles (Therapy, Rage, Compulsion, Gone) that his writing has slipped from the old days of such favorites as Dr. Death and Devil's Waltz? In some of those it's seemed as if the author just phoned in the plot; in Bones it's as if his heart simply isn't in it any more. Kellerman seems to spend more time playing with his characters - here introducing yet another cop like Petra Connor, perhaps to be another spin-off - as opposed to crafting an interesting and suspenseful plot? Surely we're all aware that being a homicide detective is actually hours and days of tedium, but readers are suspending their disbelief about that in hopes of being entertained. In the case of Bones, however, readers get an extended glimpse of the real thing: not the investigation, mind you; the tedium. Looks to me as if it's time for Kellerman to shake things up again. Not another breakup with Robin, not another brush with death for Milo - how about Alex and Milo get into a screaming, hair-pulling, teeth-rattling knock-down drag-out and not talk for a couple of novels? That ought to take care of things... heaven knows the Delaware series certainly needs an injection of some kind of life. all content copyright © 2001 to present by scmrak
|