Unnatural History by Jonathan Kellerman coming soon – a review

Not quite as enjoyable as the previous couple of books…

Unnatural History is the 38^th in Jonathan Kellerman’s Alex Delaware/Milo Sturgis series. But it’s only the third that I’ve read, after Serpentine and City of the Dead, since I picked the series up only recently.  And, although many of the same enjoyable elements (wonderfully detailed police procedure, Alex’s relationship with Robin, the easy camaraderie between Alex and Milo, the glimpses we get of Alex’s “real” cases/patients) are present in Unnatural History as in the previous two books, somehow this one didn’t click for me.   It was still a pleasant read, but that “smooth as silk” feeling I got with the previous two, where you look up hours later and realize you’ve read the whole thing in one sitting, just wasn’t there.    Perhaps it was because of the really odd family life of the main victim, photographer Donny Klement.   And although I understand that the rich are (almost certainly) different, I just had trouble finding that family background credible, and so it kept pulling me out of the story.   Or it might have been because of the almost equally odd “Wishers” project that Donny had going – which seemed to me to be both insensitive and a bit naïve – and again, required more effort to suspend disbelief.  Or Donny’s girlfriend, the not-quite-supermodel Montana farm girl, who I couldn’t manage to relate to.   Or…

Series regulars will still want to read the book, and, as I mentioned above, even with only two books in the series under my belt, I did still enjoy it.   Hopefully Unnatural History is just a bit of a one-off, and the next book will return to form.    But if not, I still have 35 previous books in the series to read!    And finally, my thanks to Ballantine Books and NetGalley for the advance review copy.

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