Here’s the latest: a tight, taught, tense tale about a murdered young woman and the apparently endless number of men who might have done her in. As usual, the crime-fighting duo of Delaware and Detective Milo Sturgis are fun to watch; I especially like the way Kellerman has broadened and deepened their relationship over the years, without resorting to the back-and-forth bantering that characterizes most similar pairings: you know, one guy says something witty, the other guy wittily responds to it, and we all have a good laugh. Delaware and Sturgis talk a lot, but mostly about the case they’re working, and neither one of them is particularly funny. That’s refreshing.

Also refreshing is the sheer intelligence of the Delaware novels. No, let’s rephrase that: what’s refreshing is Kellerman’s assumption that his readers are intelligent. There are a lot of good thriller-writers out there, but many of them have a tendency to over-explain things that should be remain subtle: motivations are made crystal-clear, tricky plot points elucidated with great care so nobody misses them, that sort of thing. Kellerman, on the other hand, writes as though he knows we are clever enough to keep up, to read between the lines, to figure out what’s going on without a lot of nudge-nudge-look-over-there assistance from him. The dialogue is sharp and lean, the narrative smooth, the surprises genuine. I like the Delaware series very much, and it would be utterly ludicrous to ask whether Flesh and Blood is the best of the bunch. They’re all excellent, every single one of them, and this one’s a winner too.

--David Pitt