num_pages: 352
description: Once again the depths of the criminal mind and the darkest side of a glittering city fuel #1 New York Times bestselling author Jonathan Kellermans brilliant storytelling. And no one conducts a more harrowing and suspenseful manhunt than the modern Sherlock Holmes of the psyche Dr. Alex Delaware. A tipsy young woman seeking aid on a desolate highway disappears into the inky black night. A retired schoolteacher is stabbed to death in broad daylight. Two women are butchered after closing time in a small-town beauty parlor. These and other bizarre acts of cruelty and psychopathology are linked only by the killers use of luxury vehicles and a baffling lack of motive. The ultimate whodunits these crimes demand the attention of LAPD detective Milo Sturgis and his collaborator on the crime beat psychologist Alex Delaware.What begins with a solitary bloodstain in a stolen sedan quickly spirals outward in odd and unexpected directions leading Delaware and Sturgis from the well-heeled center of L.A. society to its desperate edges; across the paths of commodities brokers and transvestite hookers; and as far away as New York City where the search thaws out a long-cold case and exposes a grotesque homicidal crusade. The killer proves to be a fleeting shape-shifter defying identification leaving behind dazed witnesses and deathand compelling Alex and Milo to confront the true face of murderous madness.From the Trade Paperback edition.
language: English
title: Compulsion
publisher: Ballantine Books