Survival of the Fittest: An Alex Delaware Novel (Mass Market Paperback)

~ (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Legendary L.A. psychologist-turned-novelist Kellerman raids real life when inventing the adventures of his psychologist sleuth, Dr. Alex Delaware, and some of the scariest parts of Survival of the Fittest are historical. Eugenicists lurk behind a murder spree Alex must solve, and he notes that the eugenics movement involved one elite U.S. college professor who advocated castration of ethnically lesser men, a forced sterilization ordered by Supreme Court Justice Holmes that Hitler used as a precedent to sterilize millions, and the pre-Holocaust coinage of the phrase "final solution."

Besides a truly horrifying theme, Survival of the Fittest boasts sharp but not arch dialogue; savvy psychological insights into stressed-out cops, suicides' loved ones, and malevolent therapists; and a sense of place so vivid that the Los Angeles Times has rated Kellerman the most evocative L.A. author since Raymond Chandler.

The plot's as twisty as a canyon road, and it's great fun to ride along with Dr. Alex and his sidekick, the burly, gay LAPD detective Milo Sturgis, as they dodge large red herrings and strive to find out why mildly handicapped kids are suffering "gentle strangulation" by killers who sign their handiwork with the mysterious letters DVLL, and what the devil this has to do with the high-IQ group Meta. Bonus for Kellerman fans: his Israeli serial killer catcher, Daniel Sharavi, star of his 1988 bestseller The Butcher's Theater, joins the sleuth team. But in the gory finale, Dr. Alex faces absolute evil all alone. --Tim Appelo

From Library Journal

Readers will find this latest installment in the Alex Delaware series (e.g., The Clinic, LJ 10/15/96) entertaining despite the author's tendency to overdescribe settings at the expense of character development. The psychologist again helps his friend, detective Milo Sturgis, solve a cold case: a deaf and mildly retarded Israeli girl, the daughter of a diplomat, is strangled in a park, and the letters "D-V-L-L" are found on a scrap of paper in her pocket. Authorities have failed to come up with a suspect or any leads, so the victim's father brings in a detective of his own, the great Daniel Sharavi, from Kellerman's The Butcher's Theater (Bantam, 1988). Over 200 pages later, Delaware finally goes undercover to infiltrate a sinister MENSA-like organization, and the ends of this plot, filled with psychopathic cops and pseudo-scientific racists, are (too neatly) tied up. Despite the book's flaws, Kellerman fans and readers seeking an intelligent thriller should enjoy this. Recommended for all public libraries.?Laurel A. Wilson, Alexandrian P.L, Mount Vernon, Ind.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 519 pages
• Publisher: Bantam; 1st THUS edition (November 3, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0553572326
• ISBN-13: 978-0553572322
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 4.1 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (72 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,323,551 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

• This is item 12 in The Jonathan Kellerman: Alex Delaware Series.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

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

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.

6 of 6 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.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars OHMYGOSH!, June 9, 2006

By	D. M. Annunziata (Dallas, Texas United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This one is sooooooo GOOD! First off, several characters from other book
series pop up in this one. We meet an Israeli detective named Daniel
Sharavi who first appeared in J Kellerman's non-Delaware novel The
Butcher's Theater; we meet Hollywood detective Petra Connor who would go
on to have her own series (well, two books of her own so far: Billy
Straight and Twisted), and there is even a mention of detective Peter
Decker who was created by JK's wife, Faye Kellerman. I love a good
crossover, so this was fun. This is the first Delaware novel I've read
that switches POV. Most of it is still told in the first person by Alex,
but there are some chapters told in the third person from other
character's POV. That's the way Billy Straight is told and it kind of
irritated me with that book, but really didn't bother me as much with
this one. Plus, we get an actual description of Alex, who never
describes himself.

It starts with a young policeman killing himself in public. This
policeman's sister is a nurse at Cedars-Sinai, where Rick (Milo's lover)
works and Rick asks Alex to talk with her because she is really shook up
by it all. But then, Milo asks for some help with a cold case he's been
assigned - a case with international overtones. The daughter of an
Israeli diplomat was murdered and the original investigators got
nowhere. This is where Daniel Sharavi comes in.

The investigation leads to some shocking revelations and Alex agrees to
go undercover to investigate. This almost gets him killed. MAN, does he
come close to kicking the bucket in this one! Both Daniel and Milo are
more-or-less abducted by their respective superiors, which keeps them
from backing up Alex and there is a BRILLIANT scene where Milo fakes a
heart attack to get away. I mean it - who knew Milo was such a good actor? And we've
never seen Milo so frightened and upset and flat out angry because, of
course, he blames himself for endangering Alex in the first place, even
though it was Alex who talked him into it.

All's well that ends well, though, so I won't give anything else away.
These books just keep getting better!