Alex sets out to convince Mr. and Mrs. Swope—only to find that the parents have left the hospital and taken their son with them. Worse, the sleazy motel room where the Swopes were staying is empty—except for the ominous bloodstain. The Swopes and their son have vanished into the sordid shadows of the city.
Now Alex and his friend, homicide detective Milo Sturgis, have no choice but to push the law to the breaking point. They’ve entered an amoral underworld where drugs, dreams, and sex are all for sale . . . where fantasies are fulfilled at any price—even at the cost of a young boy’s life.
When the Bough Breaks
Dr. Morton Handler practiced a strange brand of psychiatry. Among his specialties were fraud, extortion, and sexual manipulation. Handler paid for his sins when he was brutally murdered in his luxurious Pacific Palisades apartment. The police have no leads, but they do have one possible witness: seven-year-old Melody Quinn.
It’s psychologist Dr. Alex Delaware’s job to try to unlock the terrible secret buried in Melody’s memory. But as the sinister shadows in the girl’s mind begin to take shape, Alex discovers that the mystery touches a shocking incident in his own past.
This connection is only the beginning, a single link in a forty-year-old conspiracy. And behind it lies an unspeakable evil that Alex Delaware must expose before it claims another innocent victim: Melody Quinn.
A Ballantine Book
Published by The Ballantine Publishing Group
Copyright © 1995 by Jonathan Kellerman.
Excerpt from Victims copyright © 2011 by Jonathan Kellerman.
All rights reserved under International
and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by The
Ballantine Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and
simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
Ballantine and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
This edition published by arrangement with Random House, Inc.
This book contains an excerpt from the forthcoming title
Victims
by Jonathan Kellerman. This excerpt has been set for this edition only and may not reflect the final content of the forthcoming edition.
eISBN: 978-0-345-46380-7
Cover design: Marc Cohen. Cover images: beach © Richard Laird/Taxi/Getty Images; woman: Shalom Ormsby/Photolibrary
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