The doctors call it Munchausen by proxy, the terrifying disease
that causes parents to induce illness in their own children. Now,
in his most frightening case, Dr. Alex Delaware may have to prove
that a child''s own mother or father is making her sick.
Twenty-one-month-old Cassie Jones is bright, energetic, the picture
of health. Yet her parents rush her to the emergency room night
after night with medical symptoms no doctor can explain. Cassie''s
parents seem sympathetic and deeply concerned. Her favorite nurse
is a model of devotion. Yet when child psychologist Alex Delaware
is called in to investigate, instinct tells him that one of them
may be a monster.
Then a physician at the hospital is brutally murdered. A shadowy
death is revealed. And Alex and his friend LAPD detective Milo
Sturgis have only hours to uncover the link between these shocking
events and the fate of an innocent child.
關於作者:
Child psychologist-turned-novelist Jonathan Kellerman uses his
knowledge of the psyche''s weaknesses to create chilling crime
novels, many starring detective and former child psychologist,
natch Alex Delaware and cop friend Milo Sturgis.
內容試閱:
The witness remembers it like this:
Shortly after 2 a.m., Baby Boy Lee exits the Snake Pit through the
rear alley fire door. The light fixture above the door is set up
for two bulbs, but one is missing, and the illumination that
trickles down onto the garbage-flecked asphalt is feeble and
oblique, casting a grimy mustard-colored disc, perhaps three feet
in diameter. Whether or not the missing bulb is intentional will
remain conjecture.
It is Baby Boy''s second and final break of the evening. His
contract with the club calls for a pair of one-hour sets. Lee and
the band have run over their first set by twenty-two minutes,
because of Baby Boy''s extended guitar and harmonica solos. The
audience, a nearly full house of 124, is thrilled. The Pit is a far
cry from the venues Baby Boy played in his heyday, but he appears
to be happy, too.
It has been a while since Baby Boy has taken the stage anywhere and
played coherent blues. Audience members questioned later are
unanimous: Never has the big man sounded better.
Baby Boy is said to have finally broken free of a host of
addictions, but one habit remains: nicotine. He smokes three packs
of Kools a day, taking deep-in-the-lung drags while onstage, and
his guitars are notable for the black, lozenge-shaped burn marks
that scar their lacquered wood finishes.
Tonight, though, Baby Boy has been uncommonly focused, rarely
removing lit cigarettes from where he customarily jams them: just
above the nut of his 62 Telecaster, wedged under the three highest
strings, smoldering slowly.