Devil's Waltz Part 68

Driven by guilt and sadness, Alex plunges into the maze of Sharon's life-a journey that will take him through the pleasure palaces of California's ultra-rich, into the alleyways of the mind, where childhood terrors still hold sway.

The Butcher's Theater They call the ancient hills of Jerusalem the butcher's theater. Here, upon this bloodstained stage, a faceless killer performs his violent specialty. The first to die brutally is a girl. She is drained of blood, then carefully bathed and shrouded in white. Precisely one week later, a second victim is found.

From the sacred Wailing Wall to monasteries where dark secrets are cloistered, from black-clad Bedouin enclaves to labyrinthine midnight alleys, veteran police inspector Daniel Sharavi and his crack team plunge deep into a city simmering with religious and political pa.s.sions to hunt for a murderer whose insatiable taste for bloodshed could destroy the delicate balance on which Jerusalem's very survival depends.

Over the Edge When six young prost.i.tutes are found strangled in Los Angeles, an investigation begins that takes the reader on a wild ride involving powerful families and close friends. Child psychologist Alex Delaware has received a garbled, middle-of-the-night crisis call from an ex-patient. As Dr. Delaware becomes involved, he stumbles on a deep secret, one that has existed for over forty years. Along with detective Milo Sturgis, Delaware is about to find himself on a journey into an unforgettably brutal world of madness and murderous pa.s.sion.

Blood Test It is a case unlike any psychologist Dr. Alex Delaware has ever encountered. Five-year-old Woody Swope is ill, but the real problem is his parents. They refuse to agree to the one treatment that could save this boy's life.

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 s.e.x 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 s.e.xual 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 Ballantine Publishing Group Copyright 1993 by Jonathan Kellerman All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Ballantine Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

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www.ballantinebooks.com eISBN 0-345-46379-X