Obsession
Prolific author, Jonathan Kellerman, is one of those writers who brings real lived experience to bear on his fictional world. He’s a clinical psychologist with a PhD, as is his most well known sidekick-to-a-cop, Dr Alex Delaware.
Obsession is one of the (now 38) Delaware psychological thrillers which has been hiding in the back row of my bookshelves for years but only now come to the front of the queue. I find psychology endlessly fascinating so settled down for an entertaining read.
Patty Bigelow, short, dark eyes, brown mannish haircut, asexual, agnostic, ER nurse, control freak, perfectionist, with OCD, dies at 54 of pancreatic cancer. When she gets her diagnosis and very limited prognosis, she takes control of her own treatment, determined to get ‘all her ducks in a row’. She even stops the morphine to ensure she’s fully aware and functioning rationally. But she has only 25 days from diagnosis to death, and she can only barely convey an urgent final message to her adopted daughter, Tanya: ‘Terrible thing … Killed him. Close by. Know it.’
Tanya Marie is just 3 yr old when her biological mother Lydia, abandons her on her sister Patty’s doorstep. When Lydia dies in a motorcycle accident, Patty adopts the little girl and the two forge a close relationship. But when she’s 5 Tanya starts to manifest signs of OCD, and it’s Dr Delaware who treats her, and is there for her whenever she needs support. She turns to him again when the compulsive habits return following Patty’s death. By now she’s 19 and studying medicine, and she’s alone in the world.
When she reports her mother’s dying words to the psychologist she triggers an investigation that takes Alex and homicide detective Milo Sturgis into some seedy places. How come a nurse could afford the smart duplex Patty has left to her daughter? And who has she killed? And what has she been embroiled in? And how much does Tanya need to know? The underworld brings them up against drug dealers and addicts, porn makers and buyers, murderers and unscrupulous wheeler-dealers, and all manner of accomplices and victims.
I confess I struggled to follow every element of every part of their enquiries and their unique style of banter, but the more I learned of Patty’s compassion and steely determination and good-heartedness, the more I wanted her to be squeaky clean. It’s an intricately woven plot which keeps the threads tightly strung, even till the last page when the knife twists one last time.
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