BAD LOVE by Jonathan Kellerman

Jonathan Kellerman writes murder thrillers, featuring child psychologist Alex Delaware, and his good friend, LAPD Detective Milo Sturgis. Together they solve crimes that would have lesser mortals stumped. Nevertheless, they are good, gripping reads with very well thought out plots. This is quite an old book from the earlier years, written in 1993. There have been many more since then to choose from.

Alex earns his bread and butter counselling and evaluating children who have been either involved in a crime or abuse of some sort, or whose parents were involved somehow in a crime. In the middle of

one such case, where Alex is evaluating two young girls whose father is in jail for killing their mother, he receives a parcel containing an audio tape of someone screaming horrendously, followed by a childlike voice reciting a rhyme. The phrasing of the rhyme is vaguely familiar, but he cannot place where he heard it before. When Alex runs it by Milo, Milo claims to recognise the words from a previous case, the murder of a social worker several months back. Doing most of the investigating and leg work himself, Alex traces the phrase "Bad Love" back 13 years to a symposium he attended, commemorating the work of a renowned child psychologist who ran a clinic for troubled children and teens.

With Milo's help, he discovers a seemingly random series of violent deaths involving people who all
attended that same symposium. Convinced that it is all connected somehow, Alex investigates further, and finds himself to be a target.

This is a typical Kellerman book, moving at a fast, steady pace towards its gripping climax.

Happy reading!