The story centers on the impending death of the Messina Spartans' football coach Eddie Rake. One of the most victorious coaches in high school football history, Rake is a man both loved and feared by his players and by a town that relishes his 13 state titles. The hero of the novel is Neely Crenshaw.
Corinna Chapman, amateur sleuth, baker extraordinaire and proprietor of the Earthly Delights Bakery, returns for her fourth criminally entertaining and delicious adventure. When a cut-price franchise bakery opens its doors just down the street from Earthly Delights and crowds flock to purchase the bread,
Dedicated young psychologist Dr. Jeremy Carrier is unschooled in the ways of violent crime and incalculable evil - until his life is irreversibly touched by both. When his romance with nurse Jocelyn Banks is cut short by her kidnapping and brutal murder, he is left emotionally devastated and being warily eyed by police seeking a prime suspect in the unsolved killing. To escape the pain, he buries himself in his work. But when more women turn up murdered in the same gruesome fashion as Jocelyn, the suspicion surrounding Jeremy intensifies and the only way for him to prove his innocence is to follow the trail of a cunning psychopath.
When Lt. Milo Sturgis of LAPD homicide asks psychologist Alex Delaware to view the faceless corpse of a young woman in Kellerman's enjoyable if only average 26th Alex Delaware novel (after Deception), Alex is shocked to recognize the gunshot victim as someone he and wife, Robin, saw the night before in a restaurant bar. A link turns out to exist between the dead woman and a sinister-looking man Alex and Robin observed outside the bar that night.
Masterly storytelling and expert insight into the darkest of human compulsions make #1 New York Times bestselling author Jonathan Kellerman's Alex Delaware novels as compelling as they are addictive. And just when you think he has taken his spellbinding tales of mystery and psychological suspense to the limit, with Deception he takes a bold leap into terrifying and uncharted new territory.
