Yes, another book review. I have been doing a lot of reading because (1) it is a pandemic so what else is there to do? (2) my vision, with glasses, is really clear after my cataract surgery making reading a pleasure again and (3) my To Be Read pile had grown out of control – up to 26 books at one point recently. I like to keep that pile under 10. I have been feeling a lot of pressure to reduce the pile.
So I have been reading a lot. I finished this book – nearly 500 pages – in less than a week. This reduces that To Be Read pile to 22 so more reading ahead.
The star in this book is Alex Delaware, a child psychologist and sometimes police consultant. This is #13 in the long-running series of Delaware books, #36 being published just this year. His sidekick in these books is Milo Sturgis, an LAPD detective. Milo is gay, but his gayness is only briefly mentioned in this installment.
Alex is invited to consult on two murders that are puzzling the LAPD – a young waiter who was cut in half and stashed in the trunk of a car and a 30-something psychologist who was also stuffed into the trunk of a car, but not bisected. In both cases the eyes had been mutilated. So similarities – mutilated eyes, stuffed into cars – but not much else to link the cases. So Alex and Milo start by trying to learn about the victims. The psychologist in particular is interesting in that she is a blank slate – a house devoid of pictures or amenities, a job at a hospital for the criminally insane which she took, inexplicably, after a successful stint as a researcher. Seems like a big step down to Alex. Why would she make that career move? Well, it turns out that she had a weird fascination with one of the inmates there – Ardis Peake, a low-IQ guy who slaughtered an entire family some 16 years prior. And it gets really weird when it is reported that Peake, the day before the psychologist’s murder, predicted some details of her demise. “Bad eyes in a box” – arguably a good description of her mutilated corpse in the trunk of a car.
Unraveling this mystery makes for a good story. And I won’t be giving too much away if I tell you that the plot spans 16 years. There is a lot of psychology talk – not surprising – and a whole bunch of red herrings (including the title – you will see what I mean). It is a good story up until the end which stretches credulity. There are also some coincidences that are hard to swallow and not a lot of twists. So a good story. But not a great one.
6 out of 10.