Monster

Gerti’s Review of Jonathon Kellerman’s “Monster”

The Detroit Free Press review says on the jacket, that John Kellerman owns the genre of psychological thrillers. While that may be true, it was certainly not based on his writing in “Monster”, the only book of his I have ever read. While I like protagonist Dr. Alex Delaware, who is apparently featured in a number of Kellerman books, I found this book long (396 pages) and unnecessarily confusing. Delaware is partnered here with Detective Milo Sturgis, and together the two are trying to a series of odd murders in the LA area.

Perhaps I have been spoiled by reading the police thrillers written by Michael Connelly, but that man can spin a yarn that keeps you on the edge of your seat until the last few pages. On the other hand, Kellerman proved predictable, and it was obvious by about the halfway point that the character called “The Monster” was physically and psychologically incapable of killing anyone, let alone a family, and that he had been set up by someone else to take the fall for the murders.

Like so many murder mysteries, it was just a question of finding out who had the most to gain from the deaths of a young family, and the Detective and Doctor seemed to spend a lot of time finding clues, but not much time putting them together. While the book enabled me to see step by step how a police investigation into murder might actually work, I much prefer Connelly’s detectives, who figure things out with a little more speed and brain power.

Yes, I was charmed by Dr. Delaware and his relationship with his wife, but I have the feeling that has more to do with Jonathon Kellerman’s relationship with his own wife than with any fictional character he has created. “The Monster,” Ardis Peake, may have been abused and mistreated as a youngster, but I as the reader feel more sympathy for him than for either of the two victims that Kellerman cooks up early in the book. Peake allegedly “predicted” their deaths, and it’s pretty obvious that the mostly mute Peake is being set up as some kind of oracle by someone involved in the crimes. It’s just a question of by whom.

Yes, it is nice when some of the bad guys are finally brought to justice and the magnitude of their crimes revealed. It’s also satisfying when the boss of the mental hospital gets fired. But ultimately there is no justice for Peake, as he never committed the crimes of which he was accused, yet with no one else out in the real world to care for him, the powers that be decide he is best left in the mental institution for the criminally insane where he has spent most of his adult life. And that to me is another kind of crime. I as the reader wanted a distant relative to come and take this blameless “Monster” to a happier life, too. I feel stuck in solitary with him, and am too empathetic to think that that kind of “what else can you do?” resolution is satisfactory. It’s like reading “Beauty and the Beast”, but with Kellerman, the Beast never turns into a prince. “Monster” is a sad fairytale which leaves me less likely to read Kellerman again.