TUESDAY POTPOURRI: INTROS/TEASERS – “VICTIMS”

 

 

Welcome to another Tuesday celebrating bookish events, from Tuesday/First Chapter/Intros, hosted by Bibliophile by the Sea; and Teaser Tuesdays hosted by Should Be Reading.

Today’s feature is a book by an author I enjoy:  Jonathan Kellerman.  Victims is another book in the Alex Delaware series.

 

 

 

Intro:  This one was different.

The first hint was Milo’s tight-voiced eight a.m. message, stripped of details.

Something I need you to see, Alex.  Here’s the address.

An hour later, I was showing I.D. to the uniform guarding the tape.  He winced.  “Up there, Doctor.”  Pointing to the second story of a sky-blue duplex trimmed in chocolate-brown, he dropped a hand to his Sam Browne belt, as if ready for self-defense.

Nice older building, the classic Cal-Spanish architecture, but the color was wrong.  So was the silence of the street, sawhorsed at both ends.  Three squad cars and a liver-colored LTD were parked haphazardly across the asphalt.  No crime lab vans or coroner’s vehicles had arrived, yet.

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Teaser:  Two women entered the Quigg condo. First through the door was a tall buxom redhead with short, feathered hair, wearing a green sweater over a black unitard and red Chinese slippers. (p. 101)

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Amazon Description:  Not since Jack the Ripper terrorized the London slums has there been such a gruesome crime scene. By all accounts, acid-tongued Vita Berlin hadn’t a friend in the world, but whom did she cross so badly as to end up arranged in such a grotesque tableau? One look at her apartment–turned–charnel house prompts hard-bitten LAPD detective Milo Sturgis to summon his go-to expert in hunting homicidal maniacs, Alex Delaware. But despite his finely honed skills, even Alex is stymied when more slayings occur in the same ghastly fashion . . . yet with no apparent connection among the victims. And the only clue left behind—a blank page bearing a question mark—seems to be both a menacing taunt and a cry for help from a killer baffled by his own lethal urges.

Under pressure to end the bloody spree and prevent a citywide panic, Milo redoubles his efforts to discover a link between the disparate victims. Meanwhile, Alex navigates the secretive world of mental health treatment, from the sleek office of a Beverly Hills therapist to a shuttered mental institution where he once honed his craft—and where an unholy alliance between the mad and the monstrous may have been sealed in blood. As each jagged piece of the puzzle fits into place, an ever more horrific portrait emerges of a sinister mind at its most unimaginable—and an evil soul at its most unspeakable. “This one was different,” Alex observes at the start of the case. This one will haunt his waking life, and his darkest dreams, long after its end.

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I am a fan of Alex Delaware and his sidekick Milo, but it’s been a while since I read one of the books.  I am looking forward to it.  What do you think?  Would you keep reading?

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