The Conspiracy Club [Hardcover]

Jonathan Kellerman (Author)

Book Description

Series: Kellerman, Jonathan | Publication Date: November 25, 2003

Over the course of twenty acclaimed novels of suspense, most recently The Murder Book and A Cold Heart, New York Times bestselling author Jonathan Kellerman has pitted psychologist Dr. Alex Delaware against adversaries as disturbed and dangerous as Delaware is clever and compassionate. Now in Kellerman’s gripping new novel, a different hero will hold the reader spellbound: a dedicated young psychologist, unschooled in the ways of violent crime and incalculable evil–until his life is irreversibly touched by both . . . and he is thrust into a chilling hunt for a twenty-first-century Jack the Ripper.

When his brief, passionate romance with nurse Jocelyn Banks is cut short by her kidnapping and brutal murder, Dr. Jeremy Carrier is left emotionally devastated, haunted by his lover’s grisly demise and warily eyed by police still seeking a prime suspect in the unsolved slaying. To escape the pain, he buries himself in his work as staff psychologist at City Central Hospital–only to be drawn deeper into a waking nightmare when more women turn up murdered in the same gruesome fashion as Jocelyn Banks . . . and the suspicion surrounding Jeremy intensifies. Now, the only way to prove his innocence and put his torment to rest is to follow the trail of a cunning psychopath.

Spurring on Jeremy’s investigation is Dr. Arthur Chess, an enigmatic pathologist who specializes in examining the dead, but harbors a keen fascination with the darker deeds committed by the living. Arthurdraws Jeremy into an unexpected friendship, and into the confidence of a cryptic society devoted to matters unknown and unspoken. When he suddenly slips away, Jeremy is left to contend with an onslaught of anonymous clues–and the growing realization that a harrowing game of cat and mouse has been set in motion.

But who besides Jeremy is playing–and who is making the rules? Before the killer strikes again, Jeremy races to connect the disturbing puzzle pieces being fed to him. Yet his search for answers only seems to yield more questions. And deepening the mystery is the undeniable presence of someone watching it all–and guiding Jeremy’s investigation from behind the scenes. As the game intensifies, Jeremy must decide if a secret ally is setting him on the right path . . . or a sadistic enemy is setting him up for a fate far beyond even the most twisted imagination.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Kellerman re-invigorates a number of tried-and-true mystery conventions in this gripping, intricately plotted, non-Alex Delaware stand-alone novel of psychological suspense. A psychologist at City Central Hospital, Jeremy Carrier, is attempting to put his life back together after the brutal murder of his girlfriend, Jocelyn, when he is approached by elderly Dr. Arthur Chess with an offer of friendship. Jeremy, still too traumatized by Jocelyn's death to attempt even the most casual of relationships, initially rejects Chess's solicitation. After further conversation, he accepts an invitation to an elegant dinner at a very private club with Chess and five other older men and women of high intellectual and social rank, all of whom have an extreme interest in crime and the nature of evil. Just as a halting, tentative rapport with fellow doctor Angela Rios begins to develop, Jeremy receives the first in a series of mysterious, anonymous messages. By piecing these messages together with other clues from Dr. Chess, he comes to understand that someone is trying to point him toward the killer of his beloved Jocelyn and a number of other local women. Kellerman is a master at building character and slowly unfolding events, divulging just the right amount of information. Jeremy uncovers more murders, both past and present, and eventually realizes he's had everything wrong from the very beginning. Savvy mystery readers will not be surprised that the likable Jeremy finally comes to the correct conclusions and identifies the killer, earns the respect of his elderly friends and the love of his new lady.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Readers devoted to Alex Delaware may miss the L.A. psychologist, who has entertained them with more than a dozen mysteries. But not for long; Kellerman's Jeremy Carrier has a lot of similarities to his literary precursor, including his profession. Unlike Delaware, thirtysomething Carrier isn't in private practice, but his occupation still gets him inside people's heads. Unfortunately, it's his own emotional state that needs leveling out. Still reeling from the brutal murder of his girlfriend, for which he's long been under suspicion, Carrier is barely able to attend to his patients let alone handle his own grief and anger. Then four things happen: he meets attractive Dr. Angela Rios; he's invited to dine with an odd group, each of whom, he eventually learns, has suffered an unresolved loss; he begins receiving strange articles in his office mail; and murders bearing a definite similarity to his lover's horrific death begin happening again. It's a bit of a chore to get past Jeremy's angst at the outset, but once Carrier catches on to the clues, things move along much faster. The best part, though, is the end: just when you think Carrier has it figured out, there's one last odd twist. Suspend disbelief and follow along. Stephanie Zvirin
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: Ballantine Books; 1ST edition (November 25, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0345452577
• ISBN-13: 978-0345452573
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.1 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (126 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #194,294 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Jonathan Kellerman is one of the world's most popular authors. He has brought his expertise as a clinical psychologist to more than thirty bestselling crime novels, including the Alex Delaware series, The Butcher's Theater, Billy Straight, The Conspiracy Club, Twisted,and True Detectives. With his wife, the novelist Faye Kellerman, he co-authored the bestsellers Double Homicide and Capital Crimes. He is the author of numerous essays, short stories, scientific articles, two children's books, and three volumes of psychology, including Savage Spawn: Reflections on Violent Children, as well as the lavishly illustrated With Strings Attached: The Art and Beauty of Vintage Guitars. He has won the Goldwyn, Edgar, and Anthony awards and has been nominated for a Shamus Award.

Jonathan and Faye Kellerman live in California and New Mexico. Their four children include the novelist Jesse Kellerman.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A First-Rate Read with a Great New Protagonist, November 26, 2003

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Bookreporter (New York, New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Conspiracy Club (Hardcover)

The first Jonathan Kellerman book I ever read did not feature Alex Delaware. It was a novel titled THE BUTCHER'S THEATER, and though I read it almost 15 years ago, I can still remember passages of that book as if I had read them yesterday. I've read almost all of Kellerman's fiction since that time, including every Delaware novel, so I approached THE CONSPIRACY CLUB with some mixed feelings. I was slightly disappointed that this was not going to be another Delaware novel. But Kellerman's work, whether it involves Delaware or not, is so uniformly excellent that a deviation from his normal characterization would almost certainly be interesting.

Now, having spent a day or so reading THE CONSPIRACY CLUB, I can tell those of you who are diehard Delaware fans that, if you skip this excellent novel because Alex Delaware is not in it, you are cheating yourself. And if you're not already a fan of Kellerman, THE CONSPIRACY CLUB is the key to becoming one. Notwithstanding my familiarity with Kellerman's work, I felt as if I was discovering a debut novel by a new author who had studied at the feet of the masters and was channeling them.

The book is excellent in every way. The characters are unforgettable, the dialogue is witty when it should be and dark when appropriate. The plotting is so intelligent yet straightforward that you'll walk away from this great novel feeling smarter than you did when you first picked it up.

THE CONSPIRACY CLUB introduces Dr. Jeremy Carrier, a young staff psychologist at City Central Hospital in an unnamed Midwest city. Carrier is carrying around a boatload of grief since his passionate but all-too brief affair with a nurse named Jocelyn Banks was abruptly ended by her kidnapping and brutal murder. Carrier was initially a suspect in Banks's unsolved slaying, and Detective Bob Doresh has a disconcerting habit of popping into the hospital at odd times to ask Carrier off-kilter questions, just to let Carrier know that he's still under the magnifying glass. When another woman is murdered in an eerily and similarly grisly fashion, Doresh seems to be taking more than a polite interest in Carrier, a circumstance that creates even more sorrow and confusion for him. This is counterbalanced --- barely --- by Carrier's slowly developing relationship with Angela Rios, a hospital resident whose slow but sure emotional succor seems to put him on the road to recovery.

At the same time, an elderly, somewhat eccentric physician named Dr. Arthur Chess begins to take a gently incessant interest in Carrier. This interest culminates with Chess inviting Carrier to a mysterious late night formal supper. Chess and the other four guests, all individuals of wildly disparate backgrounds, treat Carrier well. He cannot help but feel, however, that he is there more to be observed and evaluated than anything else.

Almost simultaneously Carrier begins to receive a mysterious series of seemingly unconnected articles and messages through the hospital mailing system, correspondences that seem to be aiming him toward the identity of the true murderer of Banks and the other women. Kellerman, already a master of the suspense novel, takes the genre to new places here. Carrier is an empathetic psychologist, a master at sharing emotion with his patients, but he is not a detective. He lurches, in fits and starts, toward the true identity of the murderer, who is set to strike someone close to Carrier once again.

Carrier is a highly believable character. He is capable of giving comfort to his patients, even to those who seem unreachable, but is slow to accept and receive such comfort himself. Kellerman's account of Carrier's initial encounters with Rios is absolutely first-rate. What is even more remarkable, however, is Kellerman's ability to infuse his novels, and particularly this one, with realistic minor characters, who sometimes enter and exit within the space of a single page. One such character is a woman whom Carrier encounters while she is sweeping out a vacated bookstore in a building that is scheduled for demolition. The dialogue between the two characters goes on but for a few sentences, yet the woman's portrayal, primarily conveyed through her comments regarding her own behavior, is perfect. A character like this is not the stuff of literature so much as she is the essence of life. Even if her actions make no logical sense to her, the reader understands them immediately.

Carrier certainly has the potential to be an ongoing, sustaining character. He is too good a character to limit to one novel, even one as fine as THE CONSPIRACY CLUB.

--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars What happened here?, March 3, 2004

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Brian Reaves (Anniston, AL USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Conspiracy Club (Hardcover)

Kellerman is best known for his Alex Delaware novels, and rightfully so. When an author wants to break from a popular character, there's always the possibility of scepticism from the readers. Some authors are able to make this work (Jeffrey Deaver, for example). Others fall flat, as Mr. Kellerman has on this one. I honestly don't know what happened here. This is perhaps the slowest paced novel I've ever read from a veteran author. How this ever got past his agent or editor I'll never know. You are well over halfway through the book before anything happens, and I'm not exaggerating here in the least. It's almost like following someone's boring life with morbid curiousity for a while, waiting for something to go wrong. The ending, when it mercifully comes, isn't worth the build up. The Conspiracy Club from the book's title really doesn't do anything that a single character couldn't have done. It's like this is a novel he'd written years ago but put away and suddenly he had a deadline and had to grab it. The potential for a great story was here, but it would have meant losing the first half of the book and starting from there. I look forward to his next novel, but I hope it'll be back to his old standard of great storytelling.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Second-rate, April 24, 2004

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Dangle's girl (Astoria, NY United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Conspiracy Club (Hardcover)

As tired as I've gotten of Alex and Robin's love trials, I couldn't help but miss that dysfunctional and self-important duo while reading "Conspiracy Club." This book's main character, Jeremy Carrier, never comes to life and his adventures sound like Kellerman is phoning it in. . On the plus side, Kellerman's writing is as always a cut above the usual and he has good control over detail and pacing. Unfortunately, the women in this book make even stick figures like Robin seem complex. The scenes in the conspiracy club are cartoonish and about as menacing as an afternoon in a nursing home rec room. Bring back Alex and his rich boy, can't commit melodramas! As much as he gets on my nerves, at least he got a bit more to him than a "tragic secret."