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After a narrow escape from his burning house, psychologist Dr. Alex Delaware is ready for a relaxing getaway. And revered scientist Dr. Woodrow Wilson Moreland has just the ticket for Alex and his girlfriend, Robin Castagna: an all-expenses-paid vacation to a Pacific island retreat. It won’t all be fun in the sun, however. But helping Dr. Moreland prepare his fascinating case files for publication is business Alex is happy to mix with pleasure.
Unfortunately, pleasure is in short supply on the remote island of Aruk, with its dark history hanging heavy in the tropical air. Though reports of a bloody native uprising and mutants haunting the jungle may be rumors, the brutal, unsolved murder of a young woman is very real. So is the bad vibe Alex and Robin get from a battling pair of married scientists, a scandal-hunting writer, a duo of menacing beach bums, and a politician with a hidden agenda. Not to mention their enigmatic host, a man being eaten alive by secrets. As another savage murder stuns the island, a dangerous storm closes in . . . and so does the conspiracy consuming Aruk like a strangling vine. With no one to trust but each other, Alex and Robin must track down the hellish truth beneath a lost paradise—before the blue Pacific waters run red with more spilled blood.
Once again, scripter Ande Parks—acclaimed author of Union Station, Capote in Kansas, and the Jonathan Kellerman graphic adaptation Silent Partner—teams with major Marvel and DC illustrator Michael Gaydos to bring the laureate of L.A. mystery fiction to edgy, intense new life on the page.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
November 18, 2015 -
Formats
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Kindle Book
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OverDrive Read
- ISBN: 9780345541505
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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January 1, 1996
His 11th adventure takes Southern California psychologist/sleuth Alex Delaware to a remote Pacific island where hidden evils of the past and present are gradually, harrowingly, brought to light. While his L.A. house is being renovated, Alex, his guitar-making lover, Robin Castagna, and their doted-upon French bulldog, Spike, depart Malibu (home base in the most recent Self-Defense) for a four-month stay on the island of Aruk, where Alex has agreed to help Bill Moreland, a doctor who has lived and worked there since the end of WWII, organize his decades' worth of notes. Aruk, not far from the Bikini atoll, has only the look of paradise. While sorting through Moreland's files, which are stored near the eccentric doctor's extensive spider ``zoo,'' Alex learns of the recent mutilation death of a young local woman, with its suggestions of cannibalistic ritual. Another Moreland guest dies while flying over the island's off-limits U.S. Navy base; a sleazy U.S. senator, once in the service with Moreland, visits the island on a base-closing mission. Then a second local woman is gruesomely murdered, and a member of Moreland's staff is charged with the crime. Adroitly blending arachnophilia and psychological suspense, Kellerman leads Alex and Robin through a maze of coded messages before they finally unearth Moreland's island secrets and the political wrongdoings linked to them. Series fans may miss LAPD detective Milo Sturgis as Alex abandons his beloved koi for reef-dwelling tropical fish, but loyal familiars and Kellerman newcomers alike will turn these pages compulsively. Major ad/promo. -
October 2, 1996
Sleuthing psychologist Alex Delaware discovers that a respected scientist's offer of an expense-paid vacation is too good to be true. Kellerman's latest thriller spent 11 weeks on PW's bestseller list.
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