OverDrive would like to use cookies to store information on your computer to improve your user experience at our Website. One of the cookies we use is critical for certain aspects of the site to operate and has already been set. You may delete and block all cookies from this site, but this could affect certain features or services of the site. To find out more about the cookies we use and how to delete them, click here to see our Privacy Policy.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER It came in a plain brown wrapper, no return address—an audiocassette recording of a horrifying, soul-lacerating scream, followed by the sound of a childlike voice chanting: “Bad love. Bad love. Don’t give me the bad love.” For Alex Delaware the tape is the first intimation that he is about to enter a living nightmare. Others soon follow: disquieting laughter echoing over a phone line that suddenly goes dead, and a chilling act of trespass and vandalism. He has become the target of a carefully orchestrated campaign of vague threats and intimidation rapidly building to a crescendo as harassment turns to terror, mischief to madness.
With the help of his friend, LAPD detective Milo Sturgis, Alex uncovers a series of violent deaths that may follow a diabolical pattern. And if he fails to decipher the twisted logic of the stalker’s mind games, Alex will be the next to die. BONUS: This edition contains an excerpt from Jonathan Kellerman's Guilt.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER It came in a plain brown wrapper, no return address—an audiocassette recording of a horrifying, soul-lacerating scream, followed by the sound of a childlike voice chanting: “Bad love. Bad love. Don’t give me the bad love.” For Alex Delaware the tape is the first intimation that he is about to enter a living nightmare. Others soon follow: disquieting laughter echoing over a phone line that suddenly goes dead, and a chilling act of trespass and vandalism. He has become the target of a carefully orchestrated campaign of vague threats and intimidation rapidly building to a crescendo as harassment turns to terror, mischief to madness.
With the help of his friend, LAPD detective Milo Sturgis, Alex uncovers a series of violent deaths that may follow a diabolical pattern. And if he fails to decipher the twisted logic of the stalker’s mind games, Alex will be the next to die. BONUS: This edition contains an excerpt from Jonathan Kellerman's Guilt.
Due to publisher restrictions the library cannot purchase additional copies of this title, and we apologize if there is a long waiting list. Be sure to check for other copies, because there may be other editions available.
Due to publisher restrictions the library cannot purchase additional copies of this title, and we apologize if there is a long waiting list. Be sure to check for other copies, because there may be other editions available.
Padded envelope, book rate, book-sized. I assumed it was an academic text I’d forgotten ordering.
It went on to the mail table, along with Monday’s bills and announcements of scholarly seminars in Hawaii and St. Croix. I returned to the library and tried to figure out what I was going to do in ten minutes when Tiffani and Chondra Wallace showed up for their second session.
A year ago their mother had been murdered by their father up on a ridge in the Angeles Crest Forest.
He told it as a crime of passion and maybe he was right, in the very worst sense. I’d learned from court documents that absence of passion had never been a problem for Ruthanne and Donald Dell Wallace. She’d never been a strong-willed woman, and despite the ugliness of their divorce, she had held on to “love feelings” for Donald Dell. So no one had been surprised when he cajoled her into taking a night ride with sweet words, the promise of a lobster dinner, and good marijuana.
Shortly after parking on a shaded crest overlooking the forest, the two of them got high, made love, talked, argued, fought, raged, and finally clawed at one another. Then Donald Dell took his buck knife to the woman who still bore his name, slashed and stabbed her thirty-three times, and kicked her corpse out of his pickup, leaving behind an Indian-silver clip stuffed with cash and his membership card in the Iron Priests motorcycle club.
A docket-clearing plea bargain landed him in Folsom Prison on a five to ten for second-degree murder. There he was free to hang out in the yard with his meth-cooking Aryan Brotherhood bunkmates, take an auto mechanics course he could have taught, accrue good behavior brownie points in the chapel, and bench press until his pectorals threatened to explode.
Four months into his sentence, he was ready to see his daughters.
The law said his paternal rights had to be considered.
An L.A. family court judge named Stephen Huff—one of the better ones—asked me to evaluate. We met in his chambers on a September morning and he told me the details while drinking ginger ale and stroking his bald head. The room had beautiful old oak paneling and cheap country furniture. Pictures of his own children were all over the place.
“Just when does he plan on seeing them, Steve?”
“Up at the prison, twice a month.”
“That’s a plane ride.”
“Friends will chip in for the fare.”
“What kind of friends?”
“Some idiocy called The Donald Dell Wallace Defense Fund.”
“Biker buddies?”
“Vroom vroom.”
“Meaning it’s probably amphetamine money.”
His smile was weary and grudging. “Not the issue before us, Alex.”
“What’s next, Steve? Disability payments because he’s stressed out being a single parent?”
“So it smells. So what else is new? Talk to the poor kids a few times, write up a report saying visitation’s injurious to their psyches, and we’ll bury the issue.”
“For how long?”
He put down the ginger ale and watched the glass raise wet circles on his blotter. “I can kibosh it for at least a year.”
“Then what?”
“If he puts in another claim, the kids can be reevaluated and we’ll kibosh it again. Time’s on their side, right? They’ll be getting older and hopefully tougher.”
“In a year they’ll be ten and eleven,...
About the Author-
Jonathan Kellerman is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of more than forty crime novels, including the Alex Delaware series, The Butcher’s Theater, Billy Straight, The Conspiracy Club, Twisted, True Detectives, and The Murderer’s Daughter. 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 A Measure of Darkness, Crime Scene, The Golem of Hollywood, and The Golem of Paris. 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 the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Psychological Association, and has been nominated for a Shamus Award. Jonathan and Faye Kellerman live in California and New Mexico.
Reviews-
January 3, 1994 The latest Dr. Alex Delaware novel, after Devil's Waltz , follows the child psychologist on an intricately plotted, murder-strewn course that started 20 years earlier when he was on staff at a Los Angeles children's hospital. Recently, Alex has become the target of ominous threats: weird laughter over the phone, a fish from his pond cruelly skewered, a tape of a child's voice repeating the words ``bad love . '' Initially he ties the threats to his work with two young sisters whose father, in prison for the murder of their mother, is claiming visitation rights. But Alex also remembers the phrase ``bad love'' was used by a child psychiatrist honored at a 1979 symposium he cosponsored at the hospital. A file search by his LAPD pal Milo Sturgis connects the phrase to two LA murders five and three years ago; inquiries by Alex reveal a surprisingly high death rate among speakers at the symposium. After more murders and harsher threats, the trails converge in a confrontation with a psychotic killer. Kellerman constructs his plot as adeptly as Robin Castagna, Alex's live-in lover, builds her prized guitars, but the decades-past motivation, the tangled connections among victims and Alex's peripheral association with the murderer foster a clinical detachment from the story's events. BOMC selection.
October 15, 1993 Spine-chilling screams, followed by a childlike chant that includes the words "bad love, bad love," appear on a tape sent anonymously to Alex Delaware, the financially independent, Los Angeles-based child psychologist and amateur sleuth who has starred in seven previous Kellerman novels, beginning with When the Bough Breaks ( LJ 3/1/85). Delaware's pal, LAPD detective Milo Sturgis, recalls that recently a man shouted "bad love" after killing his therapist in a clinic. After some research, the psychologist remembers that he was coerced into serving as cochair of a less-than-successful 1979 conference honoring analyst Andres de Bosch, who espoused a theory of maternal good love/bad love. Starting from these seemingly unrelated past events, the two men pursue one tenuous lead after another to a surprising conclusion. The prolific best-selling author keeps the reader involved through some rather fantastic plot turns. Delaware fans will be looking for this title. BOMC main selection.-- V. Louise Saylor, Eastern Washington Univ. Lib., Cheney
Copyright 1993 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
October 15, 1993 The prolific Kellerman is in fine fettle with yet another likely best-seller that's just macabre enough to induce nightmares in the most sensible readers. Kiddie psychologist Alex Delaware receives a terrifying audiotape full of bloodcurdling screams and a disjointed voice chanting, "Bad love, bad love." Alex can't connect the tape with anything, but when he begins to get threatening phone calls, and someone brutally harpoons one of his beloved koi fish, he realizes he could be in danger. With the help of his friend, Detective Milo Sturgis, Delaware begins to unravel the complex, multilayered plot that seems to be linked to a conference he chaired 20 years ago. Delaware finally discovers he's being pursued by a tormented, relentless, deranged killer who'll burn, destroy, and torture to avenge the wrongs he suffered so long ago. As usual, Kellerman combines gripping intensity and taut psychological suspense with plenty of high-powered action, a few doses of graphic violence, and--thank heaven!--the comforting presence of the beloved, sensible, calm Dr. Delaware, who can make all the nightmares go away. Anticipate huge demand for this Book-of-the-Month Club main selection. ((Reviewed Oct. 15, 1993))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 1993, American Library Association.)
Larry King, USA Today.
"A wonderful roller-coaster ride... a guaranteed page-turner. "
Detroit Free Press
"Will have you looking over your shoulder before you turn out the lights. "
Title Information+
Publisher
Random House Publishing Group
OverDrive Read
Release date:
EPUB eBook
Release date:
Digital Rights Information+
Copyright Protection (DRM) required by the Publisher may be applied to this title to limit or prohibit printing or copying. File sharing or redistribution is prohibited. Your rights to access this material expire at the end of the lending period. Please see Important Notice about Copyrighted Materials for terms applicable to this content.
Please update to the latest version of the OverDrive app to stream videos.
Device Compatibility Notice
The OverDrive app is required for this format on your current device.
Bahrain, Egypt, Hong Kong, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the Sudan, the Syrian Arab Republic, Tunisia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen
You've reached your library's checkout limit for digital titles.
To make room for more checkouts, you may be able to return titles from your Checkouts page.
Excessive Checkout Limit Reached.
There have been too many titles checked out and returned by your account within a short period of time.
Try again in several days. If you are still not able to check out titles after 7 days, please contact Support.
You have already checked out this title. To access it, return to your Checkouts page.
This title is not available for your card type. If you think this is an error contact support.
There are no copies of this issue left to borrow. Please try to borrow this title again when a new issue is released.
| Sign In
You will be prompted to sign into your library account on the next page.
If this is your first time selecting “Send to NOOK,” you will then be taken to a Barnes & Noble page to sign into (or create) your NOOK account. You should only have to sign into your NOOK account once to link it to your library account. After this one-time step, periodicals will be automatically sent to your NOOK account when you select "Send to NOOK."
The first time you select “Send to NOOK,” you will be taken to a Barnes & Noble page to sign into (or create) your NOOK account. You should only have to sign into your NOOK account once to link it to your library account. After this one-time step, periodicals will be automatically sent to your NOOK account when you select "Send to NOOK."
You can read periodicals on any NOOK tablet or in the free NOOK reading app for iOS, Android or Windows 8.
