Book Review: Open Season by Jonathan Kellerman
By Janet Webb
March 13, 2025
When reading shifts from comfort to essential, police procedurals and detective stories satisfy a visceral desire to comprehend the inexplicable. Open Season, Jonathan Kellerman’s 40th Alex Delaware novel, meets that moment. Psychologist Delaware and his “partner,” homicide detective Milo Sturgis have been solving cases for a long while: Alex is the outside consultant and Milo the inside guy. The constants in their relationship will come as no surprise to Angelenos: they are fixated on traffic patterns, neighborhoods, and food. It boils down to the basics: how you get around, where you live, and what you eat.
At 2:53 am, on a Saturday night, a young woman’s body is dumped outside Westside Acu-Care Hospital. Marissa Adrianne French was vibrantly beautiful, managing to look gorgeous even on her driver’s license. Her socials identified four girlfriends: Tori, Beth, Bethany, and Yoli. They tell Alex and Milo that Marissa was laser-focused on her dream of becoming an actress, a not uncommon desire in LA. Her ambitions made her vulnerable and a little too trusting, which culminated in her death. Milo and Alex wonder if she fell for “the old fake-Hollywood honcho deal?” Her girlfriends are distraught when they hear the news. Her friend Beth agrees to meet them at her house. A quick segue, Los Angeles is known as the City of Dreams, a place where hopeful aspirants flock to LA, dreaming of their big break. The guys are hoping Beth can bring Marissa to life. Beth’s neighborhood encapsulates the gap between dreams and reality.
Beth Halperin lived in a custard-colored cube with a low-peaked tar roof that evoked a five-year-old’s drawing of a house. Gray pebbles in place of a lawn. No greenery visible beyond the cracked driveway hosting an older black Celica.
More of the same on the rest of the block. Bungalows built for aircraft workers in the fifties.
Milo said, “Amigo Avenue. You spot any signs of friendliness?”
Beth was drugged before she was murdered: Alex and Milo can’t discern a motive, particularly when the person they have in mind for the crime, “another Hollywood hopeful,” is “shot dead by a sniper using a weapon that turns out to have been catalogued in a previous murder.” The investigation is going pear-shaped. Adding complexity, there’s another connected murder prior to the Westside Hospital drop-off. More bodies begin piling up. For the life of them, Alex and Milo can’t identify what the killings might have in common, nor why someone with a high level of shooting skill is taking people down. At a group meeting chaired by Milo, the team of investigators weigh in.
“There’s a precise element to both shootings. Leaving nothing behind and hitting the neck off center, which Basia says would’ve maximized the odds of getting the jugular, the carotid, and trachea with one shot.”
Buxby shook his head. “I was figuring a one-off gang deal on Mr. Parmenter. Now we’ve got a slick assassin?”
“Open season on sketchy guys,” said Alicia.
Alex and Milo realize that if they are investigating random killings, it will be exceedingly difficult to uncover the perpetrator.
Little bits of business keep readers enthralled with Kellerman’s long-going series, those quick glimpses of life off the job. Alex’s partner Robin, a musical instrument restorer, and Blanche the dog, are the constants in his life. They keep him sane. Alex’s Los Angeles seems far removed from the dried up, fading neighborhoods he and Milo often frequent. “The air smelled of pine and jasmine. The same stars that had pocked the sky near the station were larger and brighter, freed from the harassment of city lights.”
Los Angeles is the City of Dreams, the City of Angels, a city blessed and cursed with a glorious dream and façade of hopes — glitter sprinkled on top of its sprawling expanse. It is a city without a center, a city with a rich and fabled past often bestowed with nostalgic memories not entirely based on fact; an erasure of memory. Without a distinct ancestry, it is often seen and referred to as a whore. The city is made up of so many distinct parts, communities intertwined and fraying at the edges. Sitting on top of one another, Los Angeles is seemingly without borders, an area of pulsing, moving bodies all swaying with the energy of the city’s rich and unique cultures.
The LA History Archive is responsible for this complex description of the City of Angels. Alex and Milo are dug in, fully committed to the people of Los Angeles, keeping them safe and never letting criminals sleep safely. Bring on #41 in the series!