Review: Do You Have a 'Compulsion' to Read Jonathan Kellerman?

By guest blogger Star Lawrence

COMPULSION (audiobook), author Jonathan Kellerman and read by John Rubenstein.

COMPULSION is the 22^nd novel featuring urbane, koi-loving child psychologist Alex Delaware and his sidekick, Milo Sturgis, the loner, gay cop who never enters a restaurant without ordering. Of course, I listened to the book and did not read (detached retina). Delaware books are like Milo’s favorite snack food—irresistible to me. I throw them down like bon-bons—or make that in one ear and out the other.

This one is the usual knot of interweaving cases and themes, opening with the perennial favorite: woman in jep, as we used to say in the screenwriting game. Spaghetti straps askew, this one is hammered, mincing across a parking lot in the dark, alone, drops her keys, pats the ground around the car…eeek. Oh, she found them. Okay, now she drives off and takes a secluded shortcut in the Hollywood Hills…and runs out of gas. Really runs out of it. But a shiny black Bentley appears, and the driver is a woman. Saved!

Don’t count on it. The theme is shiny black cars.

You will have to read or listen to see how this plays out. But Kellerman rhapsodizes about his new baby koi, the jumbled symphony of life that is New York City (he travels, but we aren’t too jealous because the LAPD puts him in a crappy hotel), and detailed descriptions of what everyone is wearing when he meets them. Has anyone seen this author and Michael Kors in the same room?

The CDs are read by John Rubenstein, a bit actor I have seen on TV several times. He does a marvelous job not chewing up the distinctive accents and speech patterns of the various characters. He is one of the best. I especially liked his reading of an eccentric old lady in a tiny California town remarking on the hairstyles of her fellow residents. “Some these gals have hair that looks like roadkill,” she cackles.

I have been to that beauty parlor.

This is not the best Kellerman ever—but it won’t disappoint if you like Dr Rationality. At least his instrument carving GF Robin (yes, they are back together—he could use his own psychologist) has a minor role. They do have a new bulldog, though—Blanche.

Oh, and I was never sure what the “compulsion” was. Kink, maybe.

Star Lawrence
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