Jonathan Kellerman specializes in
psychological thrillers, and his books are best sellers.  It is not hard to see
why, since the chapters go by fast and his plots have a fair number of twists
and turns to keep the reader guessing.  The Conspiracy Club is standard Kellerman
fare, with a hospital psychologist as its hero. Jeremy helps patients face
their illnesses and their treatments when they come in with severe physical
illnesses, often using hypnotic techniques.  He is excellent at his job, but
recently he lost the love of his life, Jocelyn, who was a nurse at the
hospital.  She was brutally murdered, and the police still suspect Jeremy since
they have not been able to find any other possible culprits.  There have been
other murders in the recent months, and detective Bob Dorish keeps on showing
up to ask Jeremy if he has an alibi for the nights of the murders.  Then an old
pathologist called Arthur Chess starts to be friendly to Jeremy, asking him
questions about the psychological genesis of evil, and inviting him to a
meeting of a mysterious secretive society.  Jeremy begins to investigate the
murders and link them to other similar murders in England. 

As a thriller, it works.  Kellerman
is able to generate tension and he makes the reader want to know what will
happen next.  But the reader needs to have low expectations; the themes of good
and evil are superficial, and the meeting of the secret society and the climax
of the novel are hackneyed scenes reminiscent of TV shows.  Jeremy is not a
believable character, although the novel seems to be setting itself up for the
first of a series with him solving murder mysteries.  The figure of the psychotherapist
sleuth has so many rich possibilities, but the work of Kellerman sells it
short. 

Rob Kahn’s reading of the audiobook
is passable, but his ability to give different voices to the different
characters is limited, and his foreign accents are excruciating.  The
performance accentuates the clichéd side to the book. 

© 2004 Christian
Perring. All rights reserved.

Christian
Perring, Ph.D., is Academic Chair of the Arts & Humanities
Division and Chair of the Philosophy Department at Dowling College, Long Island. He is also
editor of Metapsychology Online Review.  His main research is on
philosophical issues in medicine, psychiatry and psychology.

Categories: Fiction, AudioBooks