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3.75 Hearts This is #34 in the series so it gets harder and harder to say something original about this series and the author but just as he comes up with original material I will try as well.

What I like best about this series is the way Alex Delaware is willing to follow his intuition and just goes with it. All the cops are running around like chickens with their heads cut off and Alex is calm and listens to the signs and follows where he is somehow led.

You can pick up any of the books from the series and dive in. The book lets you meet Alex all over again but more so the suspense is worth the read.

Disclaimer:
I received a complimentary copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

This is the first Jonathan Kellerman book that I've read. I can tell that the Alex Delaware series is already well established. The characters are comfortable with each other and with the reader. Milo and Alex have a very relaxed friendship and work relationship. The suspects in this mysterious murder case are quite a bunch of interesting characters. Each is nuttier than the next. Following along with these two guys work together to solve this mystery, almost finishing each others sentences when they are talking through the evidence, was a fun ride!

What can ruin a wedding — a murder. This is a murder mystery to be solved when one of the bridesmaid discovers an uninvited guest dead in the bathroom. It follow the detectives on their journey to discover who the killer is. I felt it was slow and had a hard time keeping my interest. I know there are others out there who enjoy this book ..it just wasn’t one I couldn’t put down. Thank you Netgalley for an arc for an honest review.

THE WEDDING GUEST
Jonathan Kellerman
Ballantine Books
ISBN 988-0525-61849-2
Hardcover
Mystery/Thriller

The Alex Delaware series has over the years acquired a special place in my mind and heart. Author Jonathan Kellerman recently began his fourth decade at the helm of this fine canon and with the newly published volume THE WEDDING GUEST shows no sign of slowing down. The underlying story which the reader is treated to in each book never disappoints but the permanent glue in the series is the professional relationship and personal friendship between consulting psychologist Delaware and LAPD homicide lieutenant Milo Sturgis, which is firmly developed and solidly built. The series itself is designed so that in most instances one can pick a book, any book, in the series and go from there. So it is that THE WEDDING GUEST is a good, even a terrific, place to start.


THE WEDDING GUEST is a much more intriguing and multilayered tale than it might appear to be at first blush. The opening vignette is an interesting one, even for this reliably well-written, always intriguing series. A wedding reception is being held at a venue which in previous incarnations was a strip club and a church, with palimpsest-like vestiges of both remaining if one looks hard enough. A member of the bridal party eschews a long line for the ladies’ room and while skipping to a semi-hidden loo, as it were, stumbles upon a dead body. The departed’s voluntary acquisition of room temperature has not occurred as a result of the excitement of the festivities but rather by murder most foul. Delaware is towed into the scene by Sturgis and the investigation begins. The uncoventional history of the venue is just the tip of the spear of the unusual elements of the murder. The strangest and ultimately the most difficult problem which the investigators face is that no one seems to know who the victim, a young, attractive, woman in her 20s, might be. She is certainly dressed for the occasion but is not acquainted with either the bride or the groom. While the mystery surrounding the victim’s homicidal demise is the propelling factor of THE WEDDING GUEST, I will confess that my favorite parts of the book consist of those where Delaware and Sturgis apply the point of their investigative shovel to the mystery and begin revealing the layers of dirt below the polite veneers of the family members of the happy and hopeful couple whose first day of wedded bliss is off to a somewhat less than auspicious start. One family is very pretentious and harboring some interesting secrets, while the other is down to earth but also a bit less than forthcoming. Everyone is odd, of course, because...well, everyone is odd. It takes a bit of quietly ingenious digging and a touch of modern information gathering for Delaware and Sturgis to ascertain the identity of the deceased, and from there to discover why she was at a wedding that she was not invited to and, all the worse, why someone would want her dead for her troubles. Delaware provides some invaluable insight and deductions, demonstrating once again why Sturgis insists on bringing him in as a consultant and why the powers that be in the LAPD wink a the somewhat unconventional arrangement. Delaware also gets his hands a bit dirty near the conclusion of THE WEDDING GUEST but manages to do so in a way that is wholly realistic and believable. It’s a great show all around.

Kellerman’s subtle and straight-on lampooning of contemporary culture and what passes for standards is the subtle weave through THE WEDDING GUEST which provides a bit of lagniappe for even the most jaded mystery reader. As always, the mystery is the strong point of each volume of this consistently winning series but the characters continue, even at this late date, to be better than ever. Strongly recommended.

Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub
© Copyright 2019, The Book Report, Inc. All rights reserved.

Another great addition to the Alex Delaware series! I found this story a little slower, but not in a bad way, then the traditional Alex and Milo books, but still with the same twists and turns. A woman is found murdered in an out of the way bathroom at a wedding and no one knows who she is. Milo has to identify her before he can finally solve the murder. I liked all the different steps that finally led to the conclusion. However, I was left wondering when Dr. Delaware does his own work...there was mention of him finishing up a report, but never actually working.

Another great Kellerman read! The suspense of not being able to guess the culprit was great....I kept changing my mind and in the end was totally surprised.

In this 34th book in the 'Alex Delaware' series, LAPD Detective Milo Sturgis and psychologist Dr. Alex Delaware investigate the murder of a wedding guest. The book can be read as a standalone.

*****

When Brears Rapfogel and Garrett Burdett send out invitations to their wedding reception, which is being held at a repurposed former strip club called The Aura, the theme is Saints and Sinners - and guests are informed that "Everyone needs to be hot!"

Unfortunately one "hot" young woman, a brunette beauty dressed in bright red, ends up dead....garroted in a skanky bathroom on The Aura's second floor. LAPD Detective Milo Sturgis catches the case and recruits his friend Dr. Alex Delaware - a psychologist who consults for the LAPD - to help investigate.

Milo and Alex soon learn that nobody at the reception seems able to identify the victim, who appears to be a party crasher. Brears and Garrett say they don't know the woman and Brears's parents, Corinne and Dennis Rapfogel contend that: 'This was something bizarre that has nothing to do with us.' Throwing shade on Garrett's family, Corinne opines: 'If it's anything personal, it has to be from their side. They live out in the sticks.....probably rubes like that movie Deliverance.'

For his part, Garrett's dad - a large animal veterinarian - claims that his family has never seen the victim and says, 'I'd expect her to be one of Brears's friends.....You know. The age, the red dress....a pretty L.A. girl.' Moreover, Garrett's dowdy pretentious sister Amanda - a college student who 'curated her own major' of cultural anthropology, economic history, and communications - is actually hostile to the investigators. When questioned, Amanda states: "Your role offends me...Your presence means the world doesn't have its act together. By now, we should be more than rampaging baboons."

Because of their natural suspicions, Milo and Alex decide to look closely at both families, thinking the victim may have invaded the party to ruin the day for one of them.

The investigators spend a good part of the book trying to identify the dead girl, who turns out to be a 'dancer' who worked at The Aura when it was a strip club. The young woman is described as a quiet girl who just swayed and forth on stage or listlessly pressed herself against the stripper pole....and sometimes said she was a student.

Still, this doesn't elucidate the reason for the brunette's death. Milo and Alex must traverse a twisty path through strip clubs - as well as more unlikely locales - before they finally solve the case. Since this is a mystery, that's all I can say without spoilers.

On the personal side, Alex spends some time with his longtime girlfriend Robin - who makes and repairs fine musical instruments - and his French bulldog Blanche.

As for Milo, he eats gargantuan meals (as usual) and occasionally mentions his life partner Dr. Rick Silverman. In flashbacks, we see some of Milo's travails as a gay detective with the LAPD, which might have gotten him fired if he wasn't a first-rate 'closer.' Luckily, times have changed and Milo is (mostly) accepted now.

Though I liked the novel, which is largely a police procedural, a couple of things bother me. The newlyweds treacly sweet, lovey-dovey behavior (after the murder) seems overdone and phony because - before the wedding - the ostentatious, spoiled bride had serious doubts about marrying nerdy Garrett. Furthermore, I felt cheated by the book's ending, which seems to come out of the blue.

Nevertheless, this is an enjoyable mystery, recommended to fans of the genre.

Thanks to Netgalley, the author (Jonathan Kellerman) and the publisher (Ballantine Books) for a copy of the book.

Can you believe this is #34 of the Alex Delaware series???

I still love them. This one was really gripping, it took ages to figure anything out.

Alex is still pretty cool under pressure and Milo is by far my favorite fictional character ever.

There is a wedding, kind of strange. Everyone was supposed to dress kind of slutty. The venue used to be a strip club. It was fun, until a dead body is found. No one knows who this girl is, much less who killed her. And there starts the journey of #34!

I received The Wedding Guest as an ARC from NetGalley. I am huge fan of Jonathan Kellerman's Alex Delaware series and I've read all the books in the series. The Wedding Guest, which is his latest installment, did not disappoint. I highly recommend it. I love the interactions between Alex & Milo and the way they go about solving the latest case. In this book, someone is murdered at a wedding. This book kept me interested and I finished in it two days.

This is one of my favorite series that, for me, has kept the same intrigue from the first one to this newest installment (#34). It was a little different than the other books in this series but in a good way. You are kept guessing from the moment the victim is found until the end & while it moves slow, it isn’t boring at all. I love reading these as soon as they come out but then I’m left waiting for months for the next one. Which will be out when, btw?!?!

“The Wedding Guest” by Jonathan Kellerman is number thirty-four in the Alex Delaware series, but that should not discourage new readers. Even though I have read several other novels by Kellerman, I somehow missed the Alex Delaware series; however, I had no trouble following along. The book is structured as Delaware’s first person narrative, so it took a little while to discern the last names and exact roles of the participants, but the narrative was clear, cool, rational, and easy to follow.
The book opens with a scene that is every woman’s nightmare. Bridesmaid Leanza is waiting in a very long line for the public bathroom at the wedding venue, a converted strip joint. Out of desperation, she runs upstairs to the bathroom near the wedding party’s dressing rooms. There she finds the unthinkable, a body.
This was to have been the happiest day of her life for bride Brearely “Brears” Rapfogel and soon to be husband Garrett Burdette. “It’s terrible, worse than terrible, it’s it’s … tragic” LAPD consultant Dr. Alex, Delaware is called to the scene by Lieutenant Sturgis Milo. No one admits to knowing the victim, surprising since she was obviously dressed for the occasion in a designer gown and expertly coiffed black hair. “Hair falls that nicely, you’ve got a good cut.” The guests were mostly from the bride’s side, but were both the killer and the victim on the official guest list? Clues seem to be rare, but the CSI investigator finds what looks like a needle puncture.
The plot is conversation driven and the dialogue is intelligent, plausible, and revealing. Readers get to know the various players through their conversational style and the little things that they let slip in the conversations. Readers investigate right with the team and learn where guests were, how they feel about what happened, and how they feel about everyone else and everything else. Pieces of the puzzle fall into place, gradually, but it is difficult to discern who is a victim and who is a co-conspirator, who is an innocent bystander and who is a murderous psychopath. When the final picture emerges, it is scary and frantic.
Kellerman’s descriptions paint vibrant pictures of every participant:
“Milo had on one of his fossilized gray suits , a white wash-’ n’-wear shirt, and a skinny brown tie. Respectable enough if you didn’t get too close.”
“A small plain girl with dark eyes as animate as coffee beans and a husky, strangely flat voice that verged on electronically processed. She’d piled her ponytail into a careless top thatch. Errant brown hair frizzed like tungsten filament.”
And every location:
“An empty box from a West Hollywood baker and the crumbs that went with it littered his desktop. Ditto for a grease-splotched take-out carton from a pizza joint near the station. A mug filled with cold coffee sat perilously close to the edge.”

“The Wedding Guest” can certainly be enjoyed as a stand-alone mystery with a perpetrator who will be a surprise. I received a review copy of “The Wedding Guest” from Jonathan Kellerman, Random House Ballantine Publishing, and NetGalley. The pace is slow but steady, and the main characters show companionship and a determination to solve the crime. Along the way, there is both humor and thoughtful analysis of the human behavior. It is appropriate for readers who have not read the previous thirty-three books, as well as fans of the series

Alex Delaware and his sidekick Milo are back in Jonathan Kellerman's 34th novel, The Wedding Guest. The novel starts with an interesting premise. In the middle of a wedding reception, a guest discovers a young woman brutally murdered in a remote bathroom. Once the cops (and Alex) arrive and start the interviews, they quickly discover that no one knows who the woman is or why she would have been there.

If you are a fan of Kellerman's Alex Delaware novels, you will love The Wedding Guest. If you are coming into the series cold, my guess is you won't. I've read most of the Delaware series, really liked some and others not so much. This one fell into the latter category for me. What I liked was the premise and the fact that it was very Alex and Milo-centric. Personally, I don't generally like when the novels segue into Alex's personal life with Robin. What I really didn't like was that the murderer came from out of the blue so the reader doesn't have the pleasure of figuring out who it might be even though suspects are plentiful.

As I said, if you love the Alex Delaware series, you'll be happy with this latest novel.

Thank you NetGalley and Random House for the ARC.

Amazing, 34 books into the Alex Delaware series and Jonathan Kellerman still manages to knock it out of the park. The relationship between the massive detective and his psychologist consultant continues to evolve while investigating these tricky cases. A young woman found dead in a scuzzy latrine of the one-time strip club turned event venue is an uninvited wedding guest that no one admits to knowing. Another twisty procedural. Highly recommended!

The Wedding Guest by Jonathan Kellerman, Alex and Milo are at it again! This time they are trying to figure out what a dead girl in a red dress was up to to end up dead at a wedding reception that as far as anyone can tell she wasn't invited to and noone knew her. Good mystery as always with this series of books, I think Alex and Milo are getting better with age! Thank you Netgalley and Ballantine Books for allowing me to read this ARC book and give my honest opinion.

Another Alex Delaware/Milo Sturgis “affair” as the duo work to solve the murder of a young, well dressed woman found at a wedding reception. She wasn’t a relative, not a guest, but she was dead in a bathroom. As usual, Milo requests Alex’s assistance when he expects there may be emotional or psychological overlaying a case - and he guessed well with this one as Alex notices multiple possible issues during initial interviews of reception attendees. The case and search draw in several regulars from Milo’s station and it is nice to have them back. There is also a new forensics character who appears interesting and hopefully will return.

The case itself is interesting, if moving beyond what seems plausible. And here is where my major problem with this book arose. While the action is almost compulsively readable, where is the rest of Delaware’s life? Yes he spends his nights with Robin along with some occasional dinners, etc. and they both love their child substitute, Blanche. But what has happened to his work as a child psychologist and with the courts? It was mentioned one time in this book; he read over a report...that’s it for this renowned clinician. Apparently he is a house husband and part-time police consultant (un or minimally paid). In past novels, his clinical work was part of his identity.

Oh well, I suppose it is one more step on the road toward “fantasy crime story.”

3* for its usual highly readable style but also it’s further remove from the real world.

A copy of this book was provided by the publisher through NetGalley in return for an honest review.

I was provided with a complimentary copy of this book so I could give an honest review.

If you have never read any of Jonathan Kellerman's Alex Delaware series you need to do so immediately. The Wedding Guest is Kellerman's 34th Alex Delaware novel. It would definitely help with the backstory but you do not need to start at book 1, "When the Bough Breaks", to appreciate the story. Each novel is part of the series but can stand alone.

Kellerman's Alex Delaware is a psychologist who helps Detective Milo Sturgis with difficult cases. As you can guess, having a psychologist as the main character gives the reader a hint that Kellerman's book are more than the ordinary cop vs bad guy type of book. You are almost guaranteed the story will be a psychological thriller.

The Wedding Guest is no exception. Someone is murdered at a wedding reception. Were they invited? Did they crash? Do the bride and groom know them? Do any of the family members or guests know them? Why kill someone during the reception?

The characters surrounding Alex and MIlo help round out the story and make them seem more human and approachable. They are not perfect. They make mistakes. They are a perfect team for working together to catch the bad guys.

In the middle of a wedding at a former strip club with a Saints and Sinners theme, a woman is found strangled in an out-of-the-way bathroom. Not one person at the intimate gathering claims to know her. Looking closer, she wasn’t just strangled - she has a needle puncture behind her head. No purse or identification is found anywhere near the body. Dr. Alex Delaware is called to the scene by his best friend Lt. Milo Sturgis to help investigate the crime. And there are plenty of things to consider – the seedy location, the obnoxious bride, the all-too-pure groom’s side. But Milo and Alex are on the case and sooner or later, they will find the truth.

This is the 34th time we have watched Milo and Alex join forces to decipher clues and find the perpetrator. While one or two have not made it to my shelf, suffice it to say that the majority have been in my hands at one point in time. Having recently read #33, I enjoyed seeing Alicia Bogomil, the bored security guard/former New Mexico police officer from the previous novel now has a new job in Milo’s division. And of course, Moe Reed and Sean Binchy are back running surveillance and following Milo’s instructions. My favorite character continues to be Blanche, Alex and Robin’s Frenchie.

Anyway, there’s a lot going on in this one – and Kellerman takes us for several random left turns that I wasn’t quite expecting. I really wanted this to be Brearely “Baby” Burdette’s fault, even indirectly. The woman was insufferable, I don’t care that her wedding was ruined. But, was it her fault…? This was another solid Delaware novel. Keep them coming!

Suspense, twists, intrigue abound in this story. A real page turner to find out who did it. I was pleasantly surprised that I couldn't figure out who did it until almost the end of the book.

Another winning Dr. Delaware novel by Jonathan Kellerman. After 34 books you would think the writing and characters would go stale, but not in this case. My customers love this series and I am thrilled it is going strong. We need a book where Milo is the main character! (just saying...)

The wedding guest is dead, slumped on the toilet, strangled. Is she someone invited by the bride’s family, or the groom’s? Neither one. Total stranger…or so they say. The thirty-fourth book in the Alex Delaware series comes out tomorrow, February 5, 2019. I read it free and early thanks to Net Galley and Random House Ballantine.

Kellerman is a child psychiatrist, and his knowledge and experience dealing with children and their families provides him with a rare ability to invent quirky but believable characters. Here we find a wedding reception unfolding in a seedy building that used to be a strip club, and this provides the world’s tackiest wedding theme. All the women—including the bride—are supposed to dress to look “hot.” The groom’s family, a more conservative, scholarly bunch, are less than delighted, but they bear it stoically, till someone finds a dead guest in the loo. The bride—already turned bridezilla--is just undone. How could someone ruin her big day like this? How thoughtless. They should have killed that woman somewhere else. Or maybe on a different day.

This series never fails to delight me. Once again, Detective Milo Sturgis gets the call; once again, his best pal Alex is tapped to analyze a young guest, and from there he becomes further involved in the case.

There have been other books in the series that pushed this improbable situation too far, with Alex the doctor donning a Kevlar vest to go chase and apprehend bad guys with Milo. This time I find Alex’s involvement much more believable. On the one hand, he still does things that doctors advising cops never do, but limiting Alex’s participation to interviews held either in his office or at the police station wouldn’t make for good fiction. All we want is to believe. Kellerman helps us along by creating a strong friendship bond that makes Milo and Alex want to work together, and that’s coupled with Milo’s unpopularity among his colleagues due to the fact that he’s gay. Nobody else wants to get in the car and go places with Milo, and Alex does; and after all, the police do employ him, so it’s not like some random civilian is partnered with Milo. I thought this was finessed nicely this time around.

Kellerman always writes strong dialogue that includes some very funny bits here and there, and the pages turn rapidly. It’s a lot of fun to read, and if I hadn’t been able to get the galley for this one, I’d have hunted it down later at the library rather than miss out.

Highly recommended for fans of the genre.