Survival of the Fittest [Hardcover]

Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: Headline (2003)
• ISBN-10: 0345463714
• ISBN-13: 978-0345463715
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (73 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,269,652 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

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Kellerman ventures into the darkest recesses of horror!, December 22, 1997

By 

[e-mail] (Raleigh, NC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Survival Of The Fittest: (Alex Delaware Novels) (Hardcover)

You start this book with no concept that it's going to go to one of the most reprehensible areas of humanity--eugenics. But Kellerman handles this with great finesse and holds us spellbound right up to the end. Dr. Alex Delaware gets better and better with each book. And now we have a new hero, Daniel Sharavi, who makes a repeat appearance here and certainly warrants future books of his own. Kellerman continues to provide meaty, exciting thrillers with a very human quality that doesn't let you put the book down until you've lived each and every line right along with his heroes and heroines. This is a great one and well worth the time spent. It also leaves us pondering the ethics and morality involved and wondering if it's fiction or a very real dilemma of the very real world we live in.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars I listened to the abridged audiotape of this book, November 18, 2004

By 

M. C. Crammer (Decatur, GA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Survival of the Fittest (Audio Cassette)

I had heard it wasn't as good as previous books by this author, but I thought it was of the same quality. Kellerman has a formula and a style, and if you like it, I think you'll like this book. The plot involves first a very public suicide by a policeman and then the discovery of the body of a dead child -- who is both deaf and retarded, not to mention the daughter of a diplomat. Alex Delaware, child psychologist and consultant to the LAPD, gets involved through his policeman buddy. In no time at all, you start wondering who can be trusted -- and Alex begins to uncover something larger and even uglier than the death of a child.

It's hard for me to imagine what they cut out of the book for the abridgement, because I didn't feel like I was getting the reader's digest version. I enjoyed listening to this tape.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Among the so-so ones, April 26, 2000

By 

"samarand" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Survival of the Fittest: An Alex Delaware Novel (Mass Market Paperback)

I have to admit I have a soft spot for the Alex Delaware series, in fact, it is the only detective-book series I have followed in its entirety. This isn't really because it is great in its entirety: in fact the series includes great books (When the Bough Breaks, Over the Edge, Silent Partner, Blood Test), so-so books (The Clinic, The Web, Bad Love) and definitely horrible books (Time Bomb, Self Defense, Private Eyes). I know Kellerman isn't such a great writer (his tendency to string sentences without verbs is most irritating, among other things), but I confess I rather like Alex, Milo, Robin, and dog Spike. So I doggedly keep up with the series. This one enters definitely in the so-so category. The plot starts out interestingly but it is as if Kellerman didn't know very well how to get its act together. A whole-hog investigation of a certain organization is started, without any real link between the organization and the murders. After a lot of work (including undercover work), not a wisp of real, admissible-in-court evidence is found, so the author takes the easy way out to finish the story. It is readable but you have to allow your suspension of disbelief and critical spirit to take a hike. I probably rate it higher than it deserves because, as I said, I like this series, and because of the chapter on eugenics, which was very educational.