Monster and When the Bough Breaks by Jonathan Kellerman

[lightreads]

Fiction. Mysteries. Two more in his Alex Delaware series about child psychologist turned police consultant, the former from the middle and the latter the series introduction. I dug Monster -- it plays to the series strengths, sticking to the psychopathology as a tool for understanding crimes, and interesting crimes at that. Unfortunately, When the Bough Breaks did not play nearly so well with me. Kellerman's later dab hand with interesting secondary characters is undeveloped here, and Delaware's clinical evaluations of the people around him which make the later books interesting are clumsy, patronizing, and sometimes offensive here. Also, the last page of this book pissed me off so much with its disgusting, amateur respect for vigilante justice that I was literally speechless with outrage. I'm glad Kellerman found his feet later on, because this early attempt is deeply uninspiring.