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(More customer reviews)The first Jonathan Kellerman book I ever read did not feature Alex Delaware. It was a novel titled THE BUTCHER'S THEATER, and though I read it almost 15 years ago, I can still remember passages of that book as if I had read them yesterday. I've read almost all of Kellerman's fiction since that time, including every Delaware novel, so I approached THE CONSPIRACY CLUB with some mixed feelings. I was slightly disappointed that this was not going to be another Delaware novel. But Kellerman's work, whether it involves Delaware or not, is so uniformly excellent that a deviation from his normal characterization would almost certainly be interesting.
Now, having spent a day or so reading THE CONSPIRACY CLUB, I can tell those of you who are diehard Delaware fans that, if you skip this excellent novel because Alex Delaware is not in it, you are cheating yourself. And if you're not already a fan of Kellerman, THE CONSPIRACY CLUB is the key to becoming one. Notwithstanding my familiarity with Kellerman's work, I felt as if I was discovering a debut novel by a new author who had studied at the feet of the masters and was channeling them.
The book is excellent in every way. The characters are unforgettable, the dialogue is witty when it should be and dark when appropriate. The plotting is so intelligent yet straightforward that you'll walk away from this great novel feeling smarter than you did when you first picked it up.
THE CONSPIRACY CLUB introduces Dr. Jeremy Carrier, a young staff psychologist at City Central Hospital in an unnamed Midwest city. Carrier is carrying around a boatload of grief since his passionate but all-too brief affair with a nurse named Jocelyn Banks was abruptly ended by her kidnapping and brutal murder. Carrier was initially a suspect in Banks's unsolved slaying, and Detective Bob Doresh has a disconcerting habit of popping into the hospital at odd times to ask Carrier off-kilter questions, just to let Carrier know that he's still under the magnifying glass. When another woman is murdered in an eerily and similarly grisly fashion, Doresh seems to be taking more than a polite interest in Carrier, a circumstance that creates even more sorrow and confusion for him. This is counterbalanced --- barely --- by Carrier's slowly developing relationship with Angela Rios, a hospital resident whose slow but sure emotional succor seems to put him on the road to recovery.
At the same time, an elderly, somewhat eccentric physician named Dr. Arthur Chess begins to take a gently incessant interest in Carrier. This interest culminates with Chess inviting Carrier to a mysterious late night formal supper. Chess and the other four guests, all individuals of wildly disparate backgrounds, treat Carrier well. He cannot help but feel, however, that he is there more to be observed and evaluated than anything else.
Almost simultaneously Carrier begins to receive a mysterious series of seemingly unconnected articles and messages through the hospital mailing system, correspondences that seem to be aiming him toward the identity of the true murderer of Banks and the other women. Kellerman, already a master of the suspense novel, takes the genre to new places here. Carrier is an empathetic psychologist, a master at sharing emotion with his patients, but he is not a detective. He lurches, in fits and starts, toward the true identity of the murderer, who is set to strike someone close to Carrier once again.
Carrier is a highly believable character. He is capable of giving comfort to his patients, even to those who seem unreachable, but is slow to accept and receive such comfort himself. Kellerman's account of Carrier's initial encounters with Rios is absolutely first-rate. What is even more remarkable, however, is Kellerman's ability to infuse his novels, and particularly this one, with realistic minor characters, who sometimes enter and exit within the space of a single page. One such character is a woman whom Carrier encounters while she is sweeping out a vacated bookstore in a building that is scheduled for demolition. The dialogue between the two characters goes on but for a few sentences, yet the woman's portrayal, primarily conveyed through her comments regarding her own behavior, is perfect. A character like this is not the stuff of literature so much as she is the essence of life. Even if her actions make no logical sense to her, the reader understands them immediately.
Carrier certainly has the potential to be an ongoing, sustaining character. He is too good a character to limit to one novel, even one as fine as THE CONSPIRACY CLUB.
--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub
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