Customer Reviews

Capital Crimes (Random House Large Print)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

You would think that when you pair up two bestselling and award winning authors the likes of Jonathan and Faye Kellerman that the result would be a sure fire runnaway success. Capital Crimes, their long awaited collaborative book is a huge disappointment. Uninspired, and limp, the book provides two novellas that are among the most forgettable stories of 2006. Its almost as though they each provided a dull story so that their characters could shine. Trust me....it doesn't work.

Save your money and time and pass this one up.

Jonathan and Faye Kellerman are novelists, and in Capital Crimes, they have teamed up to write together again. Their first team effort was Double Homicide.

Capital Crimes is really two suspense novellas set in two different cities and feature cameos of characters from their popular suspense novels.

My Sister's Keeper is set in Berkeley where Peter Decker makes an appearance. California state representative, Davida Grayson is a lesbian and activist. She has also been murdered. Grayson had been threatened for her support for stem-cell research. Was it her politics or her personal relationships that resulted in her death by a gunshot?

Music City Breakdown is set in Nashville and features Alex Delaware. Jack Jeffries is a rock legend who left retirement to perform for charity. His body was found in a ditch, his throat slashed. The detectives on the case have their own connection to the music industry and are determined to solve the murder.

This book is not up to the 'hype' the Kellermans normally receive when they have a novel published. It feels like they had an idea, 'slapped' it together and said, "It's a good little money maker." The stories don't have much of a plot, seem hurried and forced. Only true, die-hard fans will appreciate this book. Then again, maybe not.

Armchair Interviews says: If you've never read anything by the Kellermans, this is not the book to start with. You'll be disappointed.

I am a great fan of Jonathan Kellerman, but have not read anything by his wife. This book overall was a great dissapointment to me. The stories seemed forced and pushed together with plot lines that just didn't seem to get there. Perhaps each writer realized that they didn't have enough for an entire book, so they conceptualized this idea. The poignant ending of "Music City Breakdown" would have been much better, I feel, integrated into the story. On the whole, a ho-hum read.

I had read several books by either one of the authors; some of them were very good, some were OK, others less exciting. I also read their previous joint novella effort, which I enjoyed. So, when I saw this in the bookstore, I bought it, and looked forward to reading it. What a bitter disappointment! This book is supposed to be a thriller and/or a mystery, but it lacks any thrills, and the characters and situations are so pedestrian, unexciting and humdrum, they completely failed to interest me. I couldn't care less for the victim, the police officers and investigators, or the suspects. The dialog between characters is incredibly boring and uninspired; judging from the first 90 pages of the first novella (I could not stand more of this manure-literature!) all the characters have IQs not exceeding the mid, double digits, and most of them are so racist, sexist, and/or intellectually challenged, I would not want to spend (waste...) even a minute of my life with any of them. Or, reading about them.
In summary, if you think you want to read a good mystery, this is definitely NOT it. This pathetic book is not worth your money or your time. Actually, I believe all the copies of this book should, if possible, be recycled to benefit from their most important ingredient: paper pulp.

I am a fan of both authors, but did not care for these novellas at all. Both Kellermans usually flesh out the main characters so that they are more interesting than the ones presented in this book.

"My Sister's Keeper". California state representative and lesbian rights activist Davida Grayson ignores all the threats to dispatch her to hell from rival politicians and the fundamental right as she loudly supports stem cell research. However, someone carries out the threat and kills her in her Berkeley office. Berkley homicide detectives Will Barnes and Amanda Isis investigating the shooting death seeking a motive by focusing more on her love life rather than her vocal political enemies.

"Music City Breakdown". Nashville homicide detectives Baker Southerby and Lamar Van Gundy investigate the murder of rock superstar Jack Jeffries, stabbed to death. They quickly uncover the fact that the victim was a patient of police psychiatrist Dr. Alex Delaware so they consult with him to learn more about Jeffries in order to find a motive.

Fans of Faye Kellerman's LAPD detective Peter Decker and Jonathan Kellerman's Alex Delaware series will enjoy this pair of novellas though their respective recurring heroes play minor roles with neither of the lead homicide detective teams quite as solid. Still both tales are fun as readers will enjoy this dose of DOUBLE HOMICIDE from the Kellerman duo.

Harriet Klausner

Their detective story style is quite close to what TV is producing today more and more. Detective stories are under the influence of their main competitor and client. But the written form is less dependent on images and what is visible, and on the other hand more dependent on what can be expressed with words. There generally is less technical scientific police talk because it is gibberish to normal people and on TV it is mostly visible stuff, machines and labs and gloves and etc, with some gibberish on top that does not need to be understood since the setting tells us it is technical and scientific. On the other side the two authors try to get into the more psychological and social dimensions of the characters and both are good at it. It is feasible and believable. The characters seem to be articulate and logical, even when they get out of hand and become criminal. The last point about their style on which I would like to insist is the fact that the rhythm of the stories is also quite normal. No excitement, no excessive speed. Life is following a normal pace even though there has been a crime. This enables us to develop some kind of insight and the authors plan on us following a certain line now and then and their suspense building technique is to bring us into blind alleys all the time. Then the two stories both deal with public figures, one with a state representative in Berkeley, California and the other with a rich though mostly retired rock star moving to Nashville, Tennessee for one charity concert. In the first case the situation is made more complex by the fact that this representative, a woman, is also a lesbian and is fighting for some stem cell research, which leads us into the various minority groups against these questions, the religious bigots and the extreme right. California is unluckily well known for such minorities and their great skill at bringing together rather vast coalitions and violence. And yet the art of the authors is to mislead us, nearly to the end by opening another box full of tricks little by little: the family relations and the love relations between the various people and there love appears as something particularly superficial and artificial. The second story takes us to Nashville and the music scene. the rock star of forty tears ago so, is a survivor living on his royalties but doing nothing. He is also from that generation before AIDS when those rock stars were spraying their sperm all over the world in transient and absolutely uncontrolled evanescent and at once forgotten relations that hardly contained anything else but hormonal excitation. The ex-rock-star is suddenly confronted to several real or would be descendants and that leads to a drama, of course. In this story the best part is probably the personal dimension for one of the two detectives, the one who is from a musical family, who has worked with his parents quite a lot were a child and who has perfect pitch and a great musical technique, since what you once control you never lose completely. The situation leads him to reviving his own musical filiation and the way he dramatically lost his parents, both emotionally and physically. That last chapter is great and could have led us to a completely different treatment of the story, a different treatment the authors avoided, I do not know why but I regret.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Paris 12 Créteil, CEGID

These two stories were such disappointments, as I usually enjoy the works of the Kellermans. I think perhaps it's time to put Peter Decker and Alex Delaware out to pasture. They were such minor characters that I felt they were tossed in to try to collect on earlier fame. As a reader, these novellas put me to sleep. As a writer, I found weak plots and underdeveloped characters. Come on, you guys. You can do better!

I have read all of both Kellermans' suspense novels and am a HUGE fan of each author.

However, I believe each Kellerman is much better alone than jointly and felt this way about their previous collaboration, Double Homicide: Boston/Sante Fe. I don't believe either one excels at the novella form which limits character and plot development by its very length. Each author on his/her own usually does a superb job of developing both in a full-length novel. After finishing one of their novels, I feel strongly about it, positive or negative. However, after finishing Capital Crimes, I didn't feel anything except glad that it was finally finished. This was probably due to the fact that I didn't care much about any of the characters because I hadn't learned much about most of them. Even Alex Delaware in the 2nd story didn't seem like himself, almost as if Faye had written Jonathan's main character. And the ploy of using the back story of Baker Southerby's childhood at the very end of Music City Breakdown to explain his reactions came too late and didn't work for me. I'd advise both authors to forego any future collaborative efforts and concentrate on their own series.

I had expected little from this book. Shame, that. Both of these authors had been among my favorite purveyors of brain candy back in the day. However, their books (individually) seem determined to jump increasingly bigger sharks. I tend not to notice anymore if there is a new Alex Delaware or Peter Decker book on the market.

Anyhow, I was interested in this book because I did not look very carefully and thought that it was one novel written by the two of them. Instead, it was two novellas with a theme of lifestyle and consequences that get tossed together in a single package.

Honestly difficult not to see this one as anything except a rather cynical attempt to capitalize on the Kellerman name. The novellas were not entirely bad, but certainly did not feel done. Certainly not up to the standards of either author at their best. Not even up to the more recent standards of their lesser work. Skip this one. Even for airplane rides.