Guilt: An Alex Delaware Novel by Jonathan KellermanMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
I never miss an Alex Delaware novel. I'm mostly highly sceptical of psychologists and psychiatrists – prodding around inside peoples heads, without a very clear understanding of what really happens in there. But, of course, fictional shrinks aren't taking stabs in the dark, they know as much as their authors want them to, so Alex is the perfect shrink. That might seem manipulative and not conducive to the reader's suspension of disbelief, but ironically I find it makes Kellerman's mystery/thrillers easier to believe than many others.
Face it, any mystery novel has to take short cuts – if the cops could solve a murder in the time it took me to read this book, it wouldn't be much of a mystery. Many other writers rely on massive coincidence to create those shortcuts. Alex, through his understanding of other people, gets to manufacture his coincidences.
