Billy Straight Book

There are few writers practising in the crime and thriller field with the assurance and skill of Kellerman, and this latest jumbo-sized outing is well up to par. While the plotting may be more diffuse than usual, the rich panoply of characters created here soon ensures a compelling read. When a young boy witnesses a murder, he finds himself pursued by both the police and the killer. The killing (of a beautiful young woman, Lisa Ramsey, in Los Angeles' Griffith Park) soon has Detective Petra Connor and her partner Stu Bishop involved. The principal suspect is her husband, TV star Cart Ramsey, who had beaten her up. And the echoes of the OJ Simpson case has the LAPD brass keen to avoid a repetition of history. Along with a gift for making a now-familiar locale seem fresh and unusual, Kellerman's ace in the hole has always been dialogue: rudimentary and lacking in any true-life resonance in so many thrillers, razor-sharp in Kellerman. With a cannily drawn heroine and a scarifying vision of the political blood-letting within a major us police force, this is a different kind of thriller to such earlier winners as Blood Test, but none the worse for that. Perhaps Kellerman is only just beginning to show us what he can do. --Barry ForshawRead More