Psychologist Alex Delaware and L.A.P.D. detective Milo Sturgis investigate the bizarre case of two students whose claims of abduction are revealed to be a hoax, a case that takes an odd turn when one student is found murdered and the other vanishes.

Jonathan Kellerman's Mystery opens in a bar where Dr. Alex Delaware and his girlfriend, Robin, are amused by several men who can't seem to keep their eyes off a stunning young girl drinking alone. But Alex finds nothing funny the next morning when homicide detective Milo Sturgis stops by with crime scene photos in which the "bar girl" figures prominently. How can Alex tell? Not by her face, which has been obliterated. It's her clothes that catch his...

The anonymous caller has an ominous tone and an unnerving message about something "real dead ... buried in your marsh." The eco-volunteer on the other end of the phone thinks it's a prank, but when a young woman's body turns up in L.A.'s Bird Marsh preserve no one's laughing. And when the bones of more victims surface, homicide detective Milo Sturgis realizes the city's under siege by an insidious killer.

A tipsy young woman seeking aid on a desolate highway disappears into the inky black night. A retired schoolteacher is stabbed to death in broad daylight. Two women are butchered after closing time in a small-town beauty parlor. These and other bizarre acts of cruelty and psychopathology are linked only by the killer's use of luxury vehicles and a baffling lack of motive. Now Delaware and Sturgis must track down the killer.

Troy Turner and Rand Duchay were barely teenagers when they kidnapped and murdered a younger child. Troy, a remorseless sociopath, died violently behind bars. But the hulking, slow-witted Rand managed to survive his stretch. Now, at age twenty-one, he's emerged a haunted, rootless young man with a pressing need to talk once again with psychologist Alex Delaware. But the young killer comes to a brutal end, that conversation never takes place. Or has...

"A much loved woman's dead body is found in her apartment, victim of horrendous overkill even as her dining room table is perfectly set for a romantic dinner. It turns out her devoted boyfriend has an alibi and, with few clues leading to a suspect, LAPD's Lieutenant Milo Sturgis calls in psychologist Alex Delaware for help. Then another woman is shot execution style; three bullets in the back of her head leave her husband with a profitable business....

A series of horrifying events occur in quick succession in the same upscale L.A. neighborhood. A backyard renovation unearths an infant's body, buried sixty years ago. And soon thereafter in a nearby park, another disturbingly bizarre discovery is made not far from the body of a young woman shot in the head. Helping LAPD homicide detective Milo Sturgis to link these eerie incidents is brilliant psychologist Alex Delaware. But even the good doctor's...