Mystery - An Alex Delaware Novel

Zusatztext “Jonathan Kellerman’s psychology skills and dark imagination are a potent literary mix.”— Los Angeles Times     “The latest of Kellerman’s nail-biting thrillers! set in the dreamy world of Hollywood. This time! the dream turns into a nightmare.”— The Star-Ledger   “Kellerman is a powerhouse.” —Library Journal Informationen zum Autor Jonathan Kellerman  is the #1  New York Times  bestselling author of more than three dozen bestselling crime novels, including the Alex Delaware series,  The Butcher’s Theater, Billy Straight, The Conspiracy Club,   Twisted,  and  True Detectives . With his wife, bestselling novelist Faye Kellerman, he co-authored  Double Homicide  and  Capital Crimes . With his son, bestselling novelist Jesse Kellerman, he co-authored the first book of a new series,  The Golem of Hollywood . He is also the author of two children’s books and numerous nonfiction works, including  Savage Spawn: Reflections on Violent Children  and  With Strings Attached: The Art and Beauty of Vintage Guitars . He has won the Goldwyn, Edgar, and Anthony awards and has been nominated for a Shamus Award. Jonathan and Faye Kellerman live in California, New Mexico, and New York. Klappentext The closing of the grand old Fauborg Hotel in Beverly Hills is a sad occasion for longtime patrons Alex Delaware and Robin Castagna, who go there one last time for cocktails. But even more poignant-and curious-is a striking young woman in elegant attire and dark glasses, alone there and waiting in vain. Two days later, police detective Milo Sturgis comes seeking his psychologist comrade's insights about a grisly homicide. To Alex's shock, the brutalized victim is the same beautiful woman whose lonely hours sipping champagne at the Fauborg may have been her last. But when a sordid revelation finally cracks the case open, the secrets that spill out could make Alex and Milo's best efforts to close this crime not just impossible but fatal. Leseprobe CHAPTER 1 Like a con man on the run, L.A. buries its past. Maybe that's why no one argued when the sentence came down: The Fauborg had to die. I live in a company town where the product is illusion. In the alternate universe ruled by sociopaths who make movies, communication means snappy dialogue, the scalpel trumps genetics, and permanence is mortal sin because it slows down the shoot. L.A. used to have more Victorian mansions than San Francisco but L.A. called in the wrecking ball and all that handwork gave way to thirties bungalows that yielded to fifties dingbats, which were vanquished, in turn, by big-box adult dormitories with walls a toddler can put a fist through. Preservationists try to stem the erosion but end up fighting for the likes of gas stations and ticky-tack motels. Money changes hands, zoning laws are finessed, and masterpieces like the Ambassador Hotel dissolve like wrinkles shot with Botox. The Fauborg Hotel was no Ambassador but it did have its charm. Four somber stories of Colonial brick-face, it sat on a quiet block of Crescent Drive in Beverly Hills, wedged between a retirement home and a dry cleaner. A short walk but a psychic universe from the Eurotrash cafés of Canon Drive and the shopping frenzy on Beverly and Rodeo, the Fauborg appeared in few guidebooks but managed to boast one of the highest occupancy rates in the city. Built in 1949 by a French Holocaust survivor, its design aped the mansions in the American movies that had transfixed Marcel Jabotinsky as a teenager. Jabotinksy's first guests were other postwar émigrés seeking peace and quiet. That same desire for low-key serenity continued with the hotel's clientele, divided between the genteel grandparents of Eurotrash and the odd knowledgeable American willing to trade glitz and edgy and ironic for a decent night's sleep. I knew the Fauborg because I dra...

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Jonathan Kellerman s psychology skills and dark imagination are a potent literary mix. Los Angeles Times 
 
The latest of Kellerman s nail-biting thrillers, set in the dreamy world of Hollywood. This time, the dream turns into a nightmare. The Star-Ledger
 
Kellerman is a powerhouse. Library Journal

Product details

• Authors: Jonathan Kellerman
• Publisher: Ballantine
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 24.04.2012
• EAN: 9780345505705
• ISBN: 978-0-345-50570-5
• No. of pages: 416
• Dimensions: 107 mm x 191 mm x 25 mm
• Series: Alex Delaware; Alex Delaware Novels; Alex Delaware
• Subject: Fiction > Suspense