Open Season is a recent addition to the Alex Delaware canon written by the prolific Jonathan Kellerman, and this is one of the better installments in recent years.

This case begins with a young woman who was drugged, killed, and abandoned at a hospital. Detective Milo Sturgis enlists the insights of his best friend, Dr. Alex Delaware. A trail has found its way to the doorstep of a predatory party seeker who is shot in his apartment. Alex and Milo find a string of similar murders where a sniper has been busy. It takes some skillful investigating, but an unusual connection has emerged among the victims, and a killer with a rather unique motivation has no plans to stop carrying out his ghastly executions.

Kellerman has been writing this series for about forty years and at times seems to be going stale, however this novel seems to have brought some new life into the exploits of Dr. Delaware. There is no real change in the dynamic between the main characters or the manner in which the plot infolds. I just found the clues to the identity of the killer and what was motivating him to be more captivating than I remember Kellerman creating in some time.

Kellerman often takes the more realistic approach to not introducing the culprit until much later in the story. I think that is partly why I still appreciate his works. Milo and Delaware don’t come up with these sudden moments of brilliant deductions. They just talk to people enough to unearth a true path to the solution of the crime. It gives an otherwise outlandish plot some sense of credibility.

Even if Kellerman can sometimes exasperate me with some of his plot repetitions, I still enjoy the series as a whole. My criticism of his recent works does little to dampen my overall affection for Kellerman and his characters.

Although there were plenty of familiar elements in this novel and no earth-shattering changes occurred to our dogged heroes, something did seem a little fresher in this particular entry.

Kellerman is pretty long in the tooth, so who knows how many more Delaware escapades are forthcoming, but Open Season helped ensure me to stay up to speed.

I think it’s time to get a little more retro in my crime novel reading. Nero Wolfe is testily waiting for clients to present their conundrums to he can unearth a solution and return to his orchids and gourmet meals in Rex Stout’s Three for the Chair.

After That, the Dark is quite the compelling addition to the Cameron Winter mystery series penned by Andrew Klavan. This is the fifth novel in the series and was released late last year.

Things are looking up for the former assassin and current English professor, Cameron Winter. The ongoing depression that sent him to therapy some time before seems to have lifted. He is falling in love with a woman who seems to really want to be with him. Of course, that doesn’t mean that dangerous men have decided to let the good professor live in peace. Cameron’s girlfriend, Gwendolyn Lord, tells him of a locked room mystery in which a rather unconventional murder suspect was himself dispatched by an unusual projectile. Cameron Winter decides to make a few inquiries and learns that the man who was killed in Oklahoma had inexplicably murdered and child. Winter also learns that an old adversary is stalking him once he learns that some troubling experiments may be in the works stemming from a mysterious billionaire who has some connection to his mentor known only as the Recruiter. Winter finds that his tendency to amateur sleuthing may lead to a violent end for a blossoming romance that bring him a peace that he has never known before.

This has been an interesting series so far, and this novel brings the development of Cameron Winter’s character to a critical point. The structure of the novels was a little unique in that Winter’s past comes to light during the scenes when he is in therapy. The reader gets to know of the Recruiter, a man of deep faith and deadly cunning. The Recruiter has his own enemies closing in, and Winter has to determine if his trust and faith in him has been misplaced or not.

Klavan has often claimed that this is his best novel in this series. I am not sure about that, but I can agree that it’s quite good. There is a bit of a twist that dips into some science fiction elements, but it still works. I also like that Cameron seems to be evolving as the series moves along, and the introduction of Gwendolyn Lord raises the stakes quite a bit if he continues to probe the oddest of misdeeds on the side.

It’s a little debatable for me if this is the best novel in the series, but there is no question that reading it is time well spent for mystery fans. I am quite ready for the next installment to be released later this year.

In the meantime, I return to a recent addition to a much longer running range written by Jonathan Kellerman. Alex Delaware and Detective Milo Sturgis find another potential killer is stalking the streets of Los Angelos as if it’s Open Season.

The Queen’s Jewels is a novel that is part of the Murder, She Wrote range and is an adequate literary diversion. Jessica Fletcher and Donald Bain are credited as co-writers. Since Jessica Fletcher is a fictional character, I think we can trust that Bain deserves full credit on this one.

Jessica Fletcher is invited to lecture on a cruise ship, the Queen Mary 2, which is making a transatlantic voyage from London to New York. She has been aware of a jewel theft that has occurred in Europe in which the owner was murdered. The mystery seems to have followed her aboard the ship, and she encounters old friends who were former intelligence officers and an insurance investigator. Although Jessica is reluctant to get involved in another mystery while on a working holiday, another murder onboard compels her to use her gifts of observation and deductive to piece this particular puzzle together.

Nothing too spectacular in this one. There is a bit more depth in some of the characters than we would see in the television show. It does seem to be a good choice to write this in first person perspective from Jessica’s viewpoint. Sometimes I struggle with imagining Angela Lansbury saying some of the dialogue, but the effort is valiant enough.

There were probably more recurring characters than I would have liked. We had Michael Haggerty, Inspector George Sutherland, and Dennis Stanton all in one book, which sort of felt a little too gimmicky.

It is another cruise ship murder trope, but it was still a fun read. It did manage a few interesting twists and surprises at the end.

The effort to write a blog on this novel is probably not all that relevant, but I hope it’s a fun read as well.

Now, I am going to move on to more serious literary contributions such as the latest Star Trek novel from Greg Cox entitled Identity Theft.