Motive

Alex Delaware and Milo Sturgis are back in Motive,Jonathan Kellerman's latest in the Delaware series.
This new story opens with Milo stymied over a murder investigation that's run straight into a wall. While commiserating with Delaware over the unsolved death a
woman is found shot to death in a parking lot.
The pair check out the scene of the puzzling death but clues are in short supply. Sturgis and Delaware investigate, pursuing their mutual suspicions but the new case also goes cold, frustrating the pair.

Ready to move on despite their frustration, a weird piece of evidence surfaces in the second corpse's home, seeming to link the two cold cases. As they pursue leads the dead bodies continue to pile up and the connections between the stiff's leads the pair of investigators to pursue a serial killer. They focus on a couple of suspects with Delaware making logical, psychopathic explanations that make a case against each suspect.

When one of their main suspects ends up dead, Delaware and Sturgis fiquire out who the serial killer was and how he was related to the others.


Motive is set mainly in Los Angeles proper and the setting is sometimes brought to life, such as the hills of LA and wierd CD store but but other times it is just a backdrop. The clever plot unfolds as strings of evidence pointing each suspect are made, broken, re-weaved and strengthened, leaving the reader to bounce from target to target for the perpetrator. As readers of the Delaware series are aware, Kellerman reinforces a reader's guessing game with the banter between Alex and Milo. Its moves the story along and misdirects the reader with their plausible rationalizations of scenarios.

Kellerman really knows how to develop a line of questions to probe into a crime and his dialogue is simply stellar in Motive.
I liked the way Kellerman uses his skillful character development to demonizing a suspect for a period and then yanks them back to being sympathetic.
What I find distracting is the over describing of persons and places that do not add to or move the story. I did enjoy the read it was fast paced and entertaining.

Always enjoyable. Or at least most of the time. I liked the food theme, but once again, it's amazing how they connect everything.