Showcasing Kellerman's Finest Writing

The Butcher's Theater by Jonathan Kellerman

Typically, once I have begun a series, I much prefer the author to produce within the canon. After all, publishing a book outside the series takes time away from the characters I've become entranced with. Nevertheless, I can hardly condemn a wrier to a life of tedious enslavement to their creations solely for my pleasure. And if I were totally honest, I'd admit that often their out-of-series books surpass their series books in quality because they get a fresh infusion of creativity.

Such is certainly the case with The Butcher's Theater. Jonathan Kellerman usually writes about Alex Delaware. In The Butcher's Theater he leaves Delaware behind and moves his setting to Israel. Detective Daniel Sharan is in charge of a team commissioned with the tracking down of a serial killer targeting young Arab women. The killer drains the blood of his victims, bathes them, and shrouds them in white.

The Butcher's Theater is a novel that is political, psychological, religious, and strongly geographic. The characters must make decisions and wear the resulting bloodshed on their hands-for in this volatile land, there are few decisions that can be made that won't result in someone's bloodshed.

Each intricately-drawn character has diverse motivations and Kellerman sets up the tension in a masterful manner. The team of investigators may be forced to work together, and may all want the killer found, but there the commonalties end. They are frequently suspicious of each other, often mistrustful, and carry prejudices that are barely concealed.

Like much of Kellerman's work, The Butcher's Theater is highly descriptive and highly suspenseful. He takes on a tour of the holy land, showing us the tensions through the police officer's interactions with the residents of various communities. Any community would be outraged by the murder of their young women, but when you add in the political tensions and an investigator who is as often an enemy as a friend to the people he is now trying to help. Kellerman describes the land so well, I felt as though I could hear the music and feel the sand scratching my legs.

Although it will sound cliché, this was also a book I couldn't put down. While there are places in the beginning where the book drags, the final half of the book is extremely exciting and suspenseful. Like most books about serial killers, we are slowly given more and more details and as the pace of killing increases, we become more concerned that the killer be caught.

One thing I didn't like about the novel was its overall tone of depression. We don't really see any happiness-or at least none that lasts very long. It's a very bleak picture of life in Israel, though there are moments of reconciliation and thin opportunities of hope.

--B. Redman