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Kellerman capable; Deception an easy read
Book Review
By Derryll White
Kellerman, Johnathan (2011). Deception.
Given the prodigious outpouring of the Kellerman machine, both Johnathan and Faye, I have until now bypassed their body of work. But we sell them steadily in Lotus Books so I thought I should try at least one. ‘Deception’ is an Alex Delaware novel and by checking inside the cover I have determined it is the 25th in the Delaware series. So the character should be well developed by now. And with 14 other volumes to his credit Johnathan Kellerman should be well-seasoned as a writer.
Dr. Alex Delaware is a consulting psychologist and, I gather, a long acquaintance of Los Angeles, Ca., homicide detective lieutenant Milo Sturgis. Kellerman wins the first two points of likeable writing from me quickly. He is funny with a wry, slightly sarcastic note to his writing, and he is both socially and economically aware of the world, commenting on the U.S. scene as he sees it.
The novel is an easy read focusing on American Ivy League schools and privilege. Kellerman is pretty good at illustrating what money and family connections can accomplish, and the contempt it can breed. It’s not my world but ‘Deception’ was an interesting pick. I enjoyed the Milo Sturgis character and was a little surprised at just how low key and quiet Dr. Delaware is here.
Johnathan Kellerman certainly does not make it onto my favourites list, but I will undoubtedly read another of his novels.
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Excerpts from the novel:
IVY LEAGUE – “You don’t like Yale?”
“I don’t care enough about the place to like or dislike, Doctor. They’re all the same, holding pens for spoiled rich brats and kids who aspire to be spoiled richer brats.”
POLITICS – She said, “Politicians are a low life-form.”
‘The chief’s appointed.”
‘His commodity’s power, Alex. That puts him two notches below slime mold.”
“My girlfriend the anarchist.”
“If only,” she said.
“If only you were an anarchist?”
“If only reality made anarchy a reasonable approach.”
IVY LEAGUE – “They do the [graduation] ceremony in Harvard Yard which was fine back in the seventeen hundreds when it was a divinity school for little rich twits. Now there’s space for maybe a quarter of the people who show up, they give you a predetermined seat number with preference for rich assholes who endow buildings.”
MEN – “Elise and I had purely physical sex many times. Surely you guys don’t see that as strange. A woman I can see objecting. The blending of emotion and physicality. But we are different, no?”
UNIVERSITY – “Backbiting is the mother’s milk of academia, son, because so little is at stake.”
FATHER – “But no, I don’t think so, you need a challenge, without a challenge you dress up in a bow tie and serve rich people who look at you like you’re a piece of furniture.”
GAY – “I made a few calls last night and the so-called gay community has nothing to say about him except they appreciate the AIDS money.”
‘So-called community?”
“Like we’re a powder-blue monolith?”
RELIGION – “Old, New, the Prophets, the Gospels, the Quran, the Bhagavad-Gita. The truth is, all religions promote kindness as well as incredible brutality.”
POLITICS – “The system’s rotten,” he said. “The haves keep getting more, the have-nots keep getting ripped off. Don’t think I’m a socialist or an anarchist – any kind of -ist. Those systems inevitably slip into corruption as well. I just work at seeing things the way they are.”
– Derryll White once wrote books but now chooses to read and write about them. When not reading he writes history for the web at www.basininstitute.org.
