Tanya contacts narrator Alex Delaware again. She’s now a nineteen-year-old college student. Patty died of cancer a month ago, and her last words are troubling Tanya.

She said, ‘Killed him. Close by. Know it. Know.’

Patty died before she could give any explanation.

Tanya knows that Alex is friends with police detective Milo Sturgis. She asks him to ask his friend to see if there’s some crime in her mother’s past that haunted her on her deathbed. Alex agrees.

There seems to be nothing obvious that would explain her words. Patty was a hard-working, highly respected nurse and devoted to her daughter. Her main goals were to give Tanya a good education and to provide her with financial security. The suspicion that she might have used her position to steal drugs and distribute them is quickly eliminated.

Patty and Tanya moved several times in Tanya’s life; several of their residences were in questionable areas. Alex and Milo start by looking up the addresses and trying to talk to people who might have known Patty and Tanya.

A pattern emerges. Patty had been employed by the Bedard family to take care of two different family members. Kyle Bedard, a physics graduate student and the nephew and grandson of the two patients, remembers Tanya. They reconnect.

Then Lester Jordan, Kyle’s uncle, is murdered soon after Alex and Milo talked with him. The connections between the various individuals get murkier and more disturbing.

I have been disappointed by Jonathan Kellerman’s last few novels. It almost seemed as if the author had figured out the formula and was cranking out books without putting much effort or creativity into them. Obsession is a welcome return to more complexly plotted stories. Perhaps not so coincidentally, Alex has gotten his love life with Robin back on track, has an adorable puppy, and isn’t so self-absorbed.

Robin plays a small but important role in the plot. Petra Connor (introduced in Billy Straight) returns as a police detective involved in the investigation into Lester Jordan’s murder. As is common in psychology-author Kellerman’s books, many of the characters are psychologically twisted, depraved, or damaged. It’s an indication of how far out some of his characters are that Tanya, who is again exhibiting OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder) symptoms, comes across as relatively normal.

The plot does strain credulity in places. It’s amazing that in a city as large as Los Angeles and environs just about everyone in this story is related to someone else, often in multiple ways. Nevertheless, the whodunit maintains momentum, and the pace never flags. Long-time fans of the Dr. Alex Delaware series will want to check out Obsession.

--Lesley Dunlap