Gearing up my hypnosis voice—soft, rhythmic, and, most important, monotonous—I said, “You’re doing fine . Mostly a loner, the dead guy has several half brothers and sisters with whom he has little contact (and even less in common); the father, it seems, is a serial bridegroom who abdicates both the marriages and the offspring, although he freely shares his wealth.

His face was chalky in the sunlight, UV rays advertising pits and lumps that harked back to teenage acne. The victim had recently received rave media attention for his latest project: images of homeless people in their personal “dream” situations, elaborately costumed and enacting unfulfilled fantasies.Then new murders arise, and Alex and Milo begin peeling back layer after layer of intrigue and complexity, culminating in one of the deadliest threats they’ve ever faced. That's the situation when twenty-nine-year-old photographer Donny Klement is found shot to death in his studio. Nevertheless daddy paid all Donny's bills, and Donny had a 'white card' that enabled him to get unlimited cash. A woman backs away from him, “as if there was only so much space to go around and he’d just taken a second helping.

Rave media reviews had been rolling in for his new project portraying images of street people in personal “dream” situations, dressed and enacting fantasies of their lives.Alex and Milo zero in on the messy family as well as Donny’s “The Wishers Project” that brought strangers into Donny’s home. Although the series started out because Alex is a child psychologist and was brought in where a child was traumatized by a crime that has long since passed. The 1970s and 80s treated us to high-concept episodic crime capers in sun-kissed locations, all car chases and shout-outs, every mystery solved with a seemingly endless supply of ammunition and helicopters. Many years ago, I used to be thoroughly enamoured of this series—in fact, I owned all the books—so I don't know if it's just me and my reading tastes that have changed. In this 38th book in the 'Alex Delaware' series, the psychologist helps LAPD detective Milo Sturgis investigate the murder of a photographer.

A psychologist myself, I liked the character of Alex Delaware and the mix of psychology and police work. The left-hand photo shows a dirty disheveled homeless person off the street, and the right-hand photo shows the same person cleaned up and dressed as someone they wish to be. Though he isn't present in every scene, he conveys each piece of the story leading up to the murder as if he were an omniscient narrator, capable of accessing every character's interior perspective.Moreover, Donny had a bunch of half-siblings from Victor's many marriages, most of whom he'd never met.