When jazz musician Baby Boy is killed just as it seems he is on the verge of a comeback, Detective Petra Connor retracing Baby Boy’s last days, contacts Alex Delaware’s partner Robin Castagna with whom Baby Boy had appointment the day before he died. But Robin is no longer with Alex and Alex’s passes on Robin’s new number.
Detective Milos Sturgis of the West LA division, long time friend of Alex has taken on, as a favour to a friend, the investigation of the murder by strangulation of artist Juliet Kipper. Like Petra, Milo is devoid of suspects for the killing. But Alex is struck by the fact that like the jazz musician Baby Boy, Juliet was a rising star and had been killed at her first solo show which was a breakthrough in her career. On a whim Alex trawls the Internet for similar crimes and he comes up with other murder victims in the art world, all killed on the verge of their comeback or breakthrough to success.
The investigation that links the random killings together is utterly fascinating. Made all the more so by the simply brilliant interpretation of the characters by Jeff Harding. Jeff Harding has a deep male voice and yet besides an incredible range of voices for the male characters he has an equally impressive range for the female voices. He brings the characters vividly to life. It is more like listening to a play, than a reading.
I admit that I haven’t read the last few books in the series, so it came as
somewhat of a surprise to me to discover that Alex and Robin had parted. In
this episode in the series Alex has a new love, Alison, also a psychologist.
Robin also has someone new in her life, but the bonds that held them together
for so long are hard to break. The crime investigation is well balanced between
the interesting personal relationships of the main characters and the crime
investigation. An excellent entry in this long running series.
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Lizzie Hayes
There are seventeen books in the series featuring Dr Alex Delaware.