L.A. confidential

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 08/03/2025 (386 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Your basic Hollywood tats-and-bling slimeball pretends to be a movie producer, slips date rape drugs to an aspiring young actress, then dumps her body when she ODs — and is soon murdered by a single shot to the carotid artery by a skilled sniper.

It’s not like either is all that unusual for the LAPD in a city awash in violence, but — you knew there’d be a but, right?

Is it possible that neither modus operandi is unknown, and that the same rifle has been — gasp — used in identical sniper killings?

Which fortunately for us brings homicide lieutenant Milo Sturgis and his psychologist buddy Dr. Alex Delaware onto the case, the good doctor providing us with first-person narration.

And delightful narration it is, though “delightful” isn’t a word often associated with tragic murder. Like the rest of the books in Jonathan Kellerman’s Delaware series, the 40th book is as much a continuing tale of a great and special friendship as it is a fascinating whodunit.

Sturgis and Delaware are of indeterminate age. They’re both sort of young middle age, but certainly nothing keeping pace with Kellerman’s having started the entire adventure back in 1985.

Events move crisply through whole slews of So-Cal characters — some villainous, some disingenuously oblivious to the reality of life in a land of make believe, some clearly guilty, but maybe not of the crimes heading the agenda.

Other victims emerge: a gang-banger turned fledgling rap artist who may have been killed on orders of a gang-banger turned music producer after he threatened the producer’s daughter; a woman rowing on a tranquil lake with her two-year-old, embroiled in a custody dispute with her cad of a zillionaire ex; a high school teacher, beloved by all, who gave a B to a student deserving a C but refused all imprecations to change it to an A+. Initially there are no apparent connections among the crimes.

All this unfolds step by step, but feels frenetic because, well, this is L.A.

Sturgis and Delaware practically live in their cars. Sleuthing takes them up the side of canyons, along the ocean, through the heart of Hollywood, hours of freeways and congestion, Kellerman offering tips on where the morning commute is worst and how to avoid it through a series of jogs and shortcuts.

You can walk to the library in the middle of winter, ride your bicycle to work all year long and take the bus regularly, but don’t even dream of suggesting the same to Sturgis and Delaware and millions of their neighbours — those fossil fuels are meant for burning.

Open Season is a crackerjack whodunit, yet it all comes back to the friendship between two disparate men who talk in sizzling dialogue.

Sturgis is a tough cop with a real soft side for the innocent and wronged, fluent in mean streets while earning a master’s in American literature, wildly calorie-over-advantaged, to the dismay of his husband Rick.

The erudite Delaware was an abused child — he’s scholarly, in an easy relationship with Robin, who offers sage advice while patiently cleaning and repairing ancient musical instruments in her garden shed.

Their best investigating comes when Sturgis drives over to Delaware’s, raids the fridge to make enormous sandwiches and the two hash out clue upon clue. We get to be flies on the wall. Lucky us.

Retired Free Press reporter Nick Martin isn’t sure how valuable a skill his ability to drive a standard would be in L.A.