Alex Delaware Novels: Books 7 - 8 (collective work) (edit title/settings)

Devil's Waltz by Jonathan Kellerman

Child psychologist Dr Alex Delaware returns after five years to Los Angeles' Western Pediatrics Hospital, called in by a former colleague to help with the case of twenty-one-month-old Cassie Jones. The little girl is persistently, terrifyingly ill, and nobody can explain why. Her doctor, Stephanie Eves, has finally come to suspect the unthinkable - that Cassie's own mother is deliberately trying to make her own child sick. But Stephanie needs an independent assessment of the Jones family, for Cassie Jones is none other than the granddaughter of the Chairman of the Board.

Teaming up once again with his old friend Detective Milo Sturgis, Alex starts to investigate Western Pediatric's First Family, but rapidly uncovers layer after layer of high-level corruption and intrigue concerning the hospital itself. Added to which are the brutal killings of two members of the staff. Most importantly, Alex must find the answers to some intensely private questions about the workings of one family, with all its intimate deceits and murderous hatreds. For at any given time, young Cassie Jones could be back at Western Pediatrics fighting for her life..

Bad Love by Jonathan Kellerman

It came in a plain brown wrapper, no return address - a tape recording of a horrifying, soul-lacerating scream, followed by the sound of a childlike voice delivering the enigmatic and haunting message:

'Bad love. Bad love. Don't give me the bad love...'

For child psychologist Dr Alex Delaware, the chant, repeated over and over like a twisted nursery rhyme, is the first intimation that he is about to enter a living nightmare. Others soon follow: disquieting laughter echoing over a phone line that suddenly goes dead, a chilling trespass outside his home, a sickening act of vandalism. A carefully orchestrated campaign of vague threats and intimidation rapidly builds to a crescendo as harassment turns to terror, mischief to madness.

Searching his memory for the phrase 'bad love', Alex recalls a symposium he attended over a decade ago commemorating the work of Dr Andres de Bosch who ran a clinic for troubled adolescents. But when he tries to contact the other delegates, Alex discovers a seemingly random series of violent deaths amongst them.

As he delves deeper into the history of the clinic, the escalating pattern of violence becomes inescapably clear. And if Alex fails to decipher the twisted logic of the stalker's mind-games, he will be the next one to die.