The Golem of Hollywood

July 21, 2014
Both Kellermans, father (Killer) and son (Potboiler), have written better books than this muddled supernatural thriller, which may disappoint their fans as well as readers fond of paranormal mysteries. In the spring of 2011, a “hard-domed insect” attacks a serial killer in Prague as he stalks a victim. A year later, Det. Jacob Lev, a wise ass who has been relegated to analyzing data in an LAPD traffic unit, catches a break when he’s assigned to a bizarre murder case. At a house high in the Hollywood Hills, a severed head has been found on the living room floor; a burn mark on a kitchen counter spells out the Hebrew word for justice. In the course of the ensuing murder investigation, Lev repeatedly encounters a strange beetle. Eventually, his search for the truth takes him to Prague. Those looking for profound religious insights will have to seek elsewhere.

Starred review from September 1, 2014
Two masters of psychological suspense weave a sprawling contemporary whodunit steeped in religious mythology, gruesome violence and the supernatural. A sardonic-depressive LAPD detective wakes up hung over with a beautiful brunette in his bed and can't remember how she got there. (At least she's alive.) The next thing he knows, he's been ordered off desk duty to join a "special" unit that's looking into the inexplicable appearance of a severed head in an abandoned living room. So far, anyway, we would appear to be treading on well-worn territory. But this father-son collaboration of Jonathan (the Alex Delaware mystery series) and Jesse (Potboiler, 2012, etc.) Kellerman has more on its mind than bizarro SoCal murder. The far-flung investigation by police detective (and rabbi's son) Jacob Lev, which takes him from Los Angeles to Prague and Oxford and back again, is interwoven with a tale, spanning eons, of ancient retribution and mystic transfiguration involving Jewish ritual and mythology; at its center, as the title implies, is a monstrous being built to render justice upon the wicked-including a serial killer or two. In clammier hands, this mixture would come across as a goopy farrago. But this is a witty, propulsive and frequently chilling read; its phantasmagorical elements are blended seamlessly enough with its up-to-the-minute crime-genre trappings to give its imaginative speculations some eerie plausibility. One caveat: The snappy back and forth between characters works better in the contemporary segments than in the ancient ones. But what's a few stray anachronisms in a story as ambitious and as entertaining as this? Any mystery that leaves you as satisfied with its lingering questions as it does with its solutions is worth your patronage.

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September 1, 2014
A bodiless head has been found in a house in Hollywood; from the evidence, it doesn't appear that the decapitation was done at the house. Jacob Lev, an L.A. police detective who has lost his enthusiasm for the job, is transferred, out of the blue, to a department he's never heard of called Special Projects. His first assignment: find out to whom the head belongs, how it found its way to Hollywood, and why the Hebrew word for justice was found near the head. Lev thinks he was assigned to this weird murder case because he's Jewish, but as he'll soon discover, this is a case that will change his life, a case he was almost predestined to solve. Combining the procedural structure of Jonathan Kellerman's Alex Delaware novels with the character-driven plotting of son Jesse's fiction, the novel is a solidly plotted thriller that takes its compelling lead character, Detective Lev, deep into some Old World mysteries (the word golem in the title proves key to the story). Very nicely done.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)