Edition: U.S. / Global

BOOKS OF THE TIMES; Mayhem Dosed With Psychological Awareness

Published: April 28, 2003


By Harlan Coben

338 pages. Dutton. $24.95.


By Jonathan Kellerman

388 pages. Ballantine Books. $26.95.

On the mystery writers' spectrum, the one that goes from high-action hack-'em-ups to cerebral chess games, Harlan Coben and Jonathan Kellerman occupy the same spot. It's the self-awareness niche. It's where sensitivity counts, relationships require exploration, and psychological reasoning shapes both motivation and syntax. As the main character in Mr. Coben's latest, ''No Second Chance,'' observes, ''The mind, I have learned, is indeed a dark, snake-infested pit.''

These authors' stories are best told by someone with a medical background and thoughtful bedside manner. So doctors are central to each of their new books. Of course Mr. Kellerman's long-established hero is the psychologist Dr. Alex Delaware, whose adventures seem like travelogues even if they never take him out of Los Angeles. Mr. Kellerman always provides him with a new snake-infested pit to explore.

In the case of ''A Cold Heart,'' it's the art world, in which talented people are being murdered, and bilious envy is at play. When it begins to look as if the heavy is a literary hack -- and, even worse, a pretentious, no-talent would-be critic -- Dr. Delaware's wisecracking sidekick asks, ''So why couldn't he just write for the movies instead of killing people?''

In ''No Second Chance,'' Mr. Coben's Dr. Marc Seidman makes a more dynamic figure, dealing with crime that comes closer to home. ''When the first bullet hit my chest, I thought of my daughter,'' goes the book's opening sentence. When he awakens from a coma 12 days later, he discovers that his wife has been killed in the melee and that their 2-year-old daughter, Tara, has vanished. The book's title comes from a threat that accompanies a ransom note.

Dr. Seidman, a plastic surgeon who deals with victims rather than vanity (''not so much to help the disadvantaged, but alas, because that is where the cool cases lie''), has a way of sounding ambivalent. ''My feelings for my wife, in those stark moments when I was honest with myself, have always been muddled,'' he acknowledges. And as for his parents: ''I really don't like living so close to my parents, but I dislike the guilt of abandoning them even more. My compromise: Live near them and then travel a lot.''

True, that proclivity for self-analysis promises a story paced like downhill molasses. But this time Mr. Coben's plotting skills are in vigorous form, and he has devised a cleverly intricate scheme surrounding Tara's disappearance. Though he specializes in missing persons and mixed-up identities, to the point where his previous two thrillers (''Tell No One'' and ''Gone for Good'') had some overlap, the nimble and ingenious ''No Second Chance'' has a life of its own.

Anyway, Mr. Coben gives his doctor good reason to quit reflecting and start running. It will surprise no students of this genre to learn that a husband can begin looking like a suspect in his wife's murder, especially when his college sweetheart turns up, either to seduce or to stalk him. She is a former F.B.I. agent named Rachel. And she speaks her ex-lover's language. ''I walked away because I thought you'd reject me and I wasn't sure I could handle that,'' Rachel explains. Her presence prompts the doctor's memory of an old Dan Fogelberg song, which could have been mood music for this whole endeavor if Mr. Coben did not throw in enough sharp narrative jolts.

The secondary characters in these books are case studies in themselves. Mr. Coben envisions a vicious young woman whose years as a television child star have apparently turned her lethal. And Mr. Kellerman's ''Cold Heart'' contemplates an over-the-hill guitar legend (from whose song the book takes its title) and a promising young painter. (''A gifted, damaged soul snuffed out violently, during the first blush of comeback.'') Then there is the prime suspect, the black sheep of a prosperous family: ''Macho dad and brother, all that emphasis on sports and being manly. It couldn't have been easy for him.''

That may sound like pure Delaware, but it's actually the voice of Petra Connor, another homicide detective who originated in Mr. Kellerman's vast previous oeuvre. Like many of his mystery-writing compadres, Mr. Kellerman writes quickly, has a single best-known character and occasionally develops a new figure as a sideline. Petra emerges appealingly from this Delaware collaboration and will be at the center of one of Mr. Kellerman's next books. (''I enjoy writing from a woman's perspective,'' he has said.) Also in ''A Cold Heart'' is a new, interestingly spooky figure, the cryptic, near-silent Eric Stahl. Assigned as Petra's partner, he has a background in Saudi Arabia that means to give this story a topical edge. In any case he sounds like a Kellerman keeper, too.

''A Cold Heart'' amounts to business as usual for this author, less remarkable for its mystery plotting than for the turf it chooses to explore. But if the detective work is relatively routine, the book also has a sizable social tangent: Dr. Delaware is dating. Separated from his main squeeze, the tiresomely beautiful and faintly bohemian (she wears overalls) Robin Castagna, he embarks cautiously on a new romance.

Analyze this about Dr. Alex Delaware: he's a guy who cleans the front grille of his Cadillac with a toothbrush before going out to meet a new woman. But there's something endearing about his actually admitting it. And fortunately for readers of a series that still ambles on confidently, he's smarter about murder than he is about love.