‘Evidence’ by Jonathan Kellerman

  Los Angeles has had its share of bizarre murders over the years — both real-life and fictional — but the murders described in the opening pages of Jonathan Kellerman’s “Evidence” are quite strange.
  In a half-built mansion in the tony Holmby Hills section of L.A., a night watchman stumbles upon a gruesome scene. Upstairs, he finds a dead young couple in a sexual embrace, as the watchman describes as “him on top of her, her legs up, one hooked around his back.”
  Dr. Alex Delaware and veteran homicide cop Milo Sturgis, the heroes of many Kellerman novels, quickly arrive at the mansion. They find that the male victim was shot in the head, and the woman was strangled to death. Delaware calls the scene “a sick parody of passion.” The murders took place there, but the sexual gymnastics were staged, as the police discover.
  This is the beginning of a long, multilayered case that takes Delaware and Sturgis all over the City of Angels to find not only the killers but who the victims are. And there are a lot of people involved. The male victim is Desmond Backer, a young architect who seduced female co-workers at an architectural firm and many other ladies throughout his life. He also was passionate about the environment and had a disdain for large, overly built structures.
  The female victim is Doreen Fredd, an attractive woman with a dark, mysterious past. Sturgis and Delaware find that the tentacles in this case run deep. They go to Backer’s former architectural firm, GHC: Concepts, and interview co-workers and Backer’s ex-boss, Helga Gemein. She seems pretty indifferent to Backer’s death, since he had just left the firm recently in a less-than-amiable parting. Helga is icy and may have something to hide.
  But more suspects surface as Delaware and Sturgis keep digging. They find more lovers from Backer’s past and discover that this case intertwines with a case involving a wealthy but troublesome Indonesian prince who parties all the time.
  As expected, Kellerman sends the story into several steep spins and turns — the mansion burns down and another death surfaces. However, fans of Delaware can always count on the case being solved and not having too many loose ends.
  “Evidence” is the 24th Kellerman novel featuring master psychologist Alex Delaware, but the doctor plays second fiddle to Sturgis in this story. It’s all about Milo and using his skills and acumen to solve the case. “Evidence” is really a classic police procedural. There’s little psycho-analysis by Delaware, and he really doesn’t do much.
  All of this leads to one question: Is Kellerman putting Delaware out to pasture? And if not, is he giving him a small break for now? Kellerman seems to have focused more on his new crime fighting duo, Moe Reed and Aaron Fox, who appeared in “Bones” (the 23rd Delaware story) and had the stage to themselves in last spring‘s “True Detectives,” a delightful and thrilling story.
  After all, after 20-plus years, how many Delaware novels can there be?
  If Walter Moseley can end the Easy Rawlins series, then maybe Kellerman is rounding third and heading home with Delaware. It’ll be exciting, and perhaps sad, to see what happens.