The Sunday Mail
“THE thing that had been inside the blanket grinned up at her. Then it shape-shifted, oh God, and she cried out and it fell apart in front of her eyes because all that had held it together was the tension of the blanket-wrap. Tiny skeleton, now a scatter of loose bones. The skull had landed in front of her. Smiling. Black eyeholes insanely piercing.”
This chilling moment sets the tone for Jonathan Kellerman’s bestseller “Guilt”.
While renovating her new house, Holly unearths an infant’s skeleton buried six decades ago, sending psychologist Alex Delaware and homicide detective Milo Sturgis on a mission to unravel the mystery surrounding this discovery. They pair has to dig for clues from a past era where most potential witnesses have already passed on.
The story picks up pace when a worker planning a drainage ditch finds another skeleton, and then a jogger stumbles upon a woman’s dead body nearby. Kellerman really knows how to create suspense, crafting a storyline that keeps readers on the edge and always guessing as to the final outcome.
As Delaware and Sturgis try to link the mysterious deaths, they reveal secrets that had been buried for decades and unsettle the people who have since moved on with their lives. Issues of secret abortions and strange rituals by some of the unlikeliest personalities add to the tension.
Threading clues together and following up on potential witnesses, the psychologist and detective showcase their prowess in acquiring and processing the titbits of information they come across. The twists and turns in the case, coupled with hard-to-believe coincidences spice things up, and by the time the reader reaches the climax, one wonders if the psychologist and the detective are prepared to handle the chilling truth they are working so hard to uncover.
From the charters, both dead and alive, to the encounters and events he describes with such mastery, Kellerman does a brilliant job of stitching together true suspense in this thriller. Like the characters in the book, I too questioned the involvement of a psychologist in solving a murder mystery. But as the pages go by, it makes perfect sense to have him in the mix.
It is genuinely un-put-downable and you will flip the pages to the very last one in a single sitting. Having published his first novel in 1985, Kellerman has released over 50 books with many of them featuring Dr Alex Delaware as the main character.
