Capital Crimes

Capital Crimes by Jonathan & Faye Kellerman

Category: Crime Short Fiction Grade: C+

I really wish these two would stop this. The Kellermans are a husband and wife team who write mysteries separately and together. Separately, their books are great. Her's feature Rina and Peter Decker - she's a lifelong Orthodox Jew and he's an LAPD detective who, as a young adult, learned he had been adopted from an Orthodox family and is trying to reset his roots. Jonathan's books feature Alex Delaware, a psychologist who works with the LAPD. Their books are almost always enjoyable - fast paced, interestingly plotted, great character development.

This is the second time they've tried to write a book together and it hasn't really worked either time. The problem isn't, I don't think, that they can't work together. Rather, the problem is that, both times, they've tried to write two novellas instead of one novel. They write pretty low density work -- lots of dialog; short paragraphs. In addition, with both of them, character development is always at least as important as plot progression. They haven't given up either low density or characters in the new book (Decker and Delaware even make appearances). Unfortunately, what suffers is the plot progression. They don't seem to have adjusted their plotting to the shorter format. They start with interesting stories and then spend a lot of time letting us get to know the detectives involved and a few of the key characters. The problem is they get lost in this. Its like, in each of the novellas, they got about 125 pages in and realized that, unlike their novels, they were almost out of space! In both stories, they drop an artificial and abrupt solution on the crime. In both cases, the murderer turns out to be someone we didn't get to know at all.

I'll keep reading their individual novels and I'll probably even keeping trying their short format work to see if they get it right. I just wish they'd try collaborating on a full length novel - I think it could be good. This book isn't.