When psychologist - detective, Alex Delaware, is invited to a party for a Los Angeles sex therapist, thrown at an elaborate mansion, he ignores the invitation. But soon his curiosity gets the better of him. After all, it'll be nice to see how the other - rich - half lives. But soon, Alex runs into someone from his past, Sharon Ransom. Someone whom he was deeply in love with, but who left him without a moment's notice more than a decade earlier. Sharon now seems jumpy and nervous about something. What, Alex doesn't know. But he plans to find out, as he makes a lunch date with her. One that never happens, as she is found dead the next day. The cause, an apparent suicide. Alex knows better. Driven by his own guilt over Sharon's death, he decides to find out what really happened to her. His detective work takes him on a journey through some of California's richest areas, and most powerful people, and into the minds of many people, where childhood terror is still lurking.

 
Over the Edge, the third book of the series,  is a psychological thriller that revolves around psychologist Alex Delaware and a former client of his. This teen calls Alex in the middle of the night and, with a mixture of insane garbled prose, begs for help...

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Jonathan Kellerman - Obsession
Mega-best-selling Kellerman delivers another psychological suspense tale starring shrink hero Alex Delaware. While the Delaware novels are wildly popular, this one, at least, gets by only on plot. The characters are sketchily drawn, except for Delaware's new dog, who receives far more intensive (and ridiculous) development than any human in the book. Kellerman also takes the shortcut of having his characters deliver plot details and provide background motivations in artificial dialogue that should have been left to an omniscient narrator. But Kellerman does have a strong plot going for him (once we've waded through excessive descriptions of meals and interiors). The story centers on a young woman, whom Delaware treated as a child and who returns to tell the psychologist of the deathbed confession of her aunt and adopted mother--a woman whom Alex remembers as a heroically capable mother and nurse. The recently deceased woman allegedly told her niece that she had killed someone.