Publisher: Random House Audio (Audiobook Format – 5 February 2019)

Series: Alex Delaware – Book 34

Length: 12 hours 20 minutes

My Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

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Bestselling author Jonathan Kellerman returns with the 34^th book in his long-running Alex Delaware crime series, The Wedding Guest, a clever and captivating murder mystery.

It is the couple’s big day, an elaborate wedding ending with a ‘Saints and Sinners’ themed reception in a former Los Angles strip club.  The only thing that could upstage the happy couple is the discovery of a well-dressed murder victim hidden in one of the club’s bathrooms.  None of the guests claim to know who the victim is, and she appears to have crashed the wedding without anyone noticing.

Psychologist Alex Delaware is called onto the case by his friend Detective Milo Sturgis.  With no obvious suspects at the wedding, Alex and Milo not only have to find out who the murderer is but also the identity of the victim.  As they slowly build up a picture of the events that led up to the murder, the investigators soon discover that this not the first time that the murderer has struck, and his is still at large in the city.

Kellerman is an extremely prolific and skilled crime fiction author, who has been writing books for over 30 years.  His first book, When the Bough Breaks, was released in 1985 and was the first book in his main body of work, the Alex Delaware series.  In addition to huge number of books in his main series, Kellerman has also written three shorter series: the Petra Connor series, the Jacob Lev series and the Clay Edison series.  The latter two series he wrote with his son, Jesse Kellerman.  In addition, he has also written several standalone novels, including two with his wife, Faye Kellerman, and several nonfiction books reflecting his career as an actual clinical psychologist.

As mentioned above, this is the 34^th book in the Alex Delaware series, and I was a bit uncertain how easy it would be to come into this series this far in, having not previously read any of Kellerman’s books before.  Luckily, I found that The Wedding Guest was extremely accessible to new readers to the series as there were only minimal throwaway references to the previous books or cases that the main characters were involved in.  The author instead dives straight into the mystery and builds up his story from scratch.  The focus is on the main case, with only a brief look at the protagonist’s personal life, and as a result there is very little need to dive back into the series’ previous investigations.  I ended up really enjoying The Wedding Guest and thought it was an excellent piece of crime fiction.

The standout part of this book has to be the central investigation into the murder of the unexpected guest at the wedding.  The overall case is compelling, and I found myself getting pretty hooked on the story and trying to work out who the killer is, especially as the case expands further out.  Kellerman has a very interesting murder mystery writing style.  Rather than creating a fast-paced mystery that has the investigators barrelling from one massive clue to the next, Kellerman keeps the investigation within The Wedding Guest at a much slower and more realistic pace.  The investigators are forced to wait for test results and for technicians and coroners to get back to the office, and most of their investigation involves meeting and questioning people of interest.  The whole process is a lot more methodical that other crime fiction books I have read; it has a much more realistic investigative timeline.  The author has a very detailed orientating writing style, recording a large amount of details about the suspects, their possessions and the locations they are found in, so much so that you expect any of these details to become relevant at a later point in the text.  I loved how realistic the investigation came across, from the timelines and issues that real-life detectives would experience, to the impact of chance or coincidence on solving a case and the use of modern-day technology, such as social media or internet searches, to obtain information on suspects.  The case as a whole was deeply captivating, and my curiosity about who had committed the crime kept me deeply enthralled within The Wedding Guest.

This book is very character based, as the story focuses deeply on the lives of a huge range of secondary characters, most of whom are suspects, witnesses or victims of the crimes being convicted.  Through his protagonists, Kellerman dives into the lives of these characters, finding out surprising details and issues that may or may not have some impact on the case.  As a result, the reader is quite exposed to these secondary characters, in some way more so than some of the protagonists investigating the case.  Many of the characters who are suspects are fairly duplicitous or unlikeable in some way or another, making it rather easy for the readers to dislike them and see them as reasonable suspects for the murder.  In contrast to these interesting but deceitful characters are the main protagonists, Alex and Milo.  I loved the fun friendship between these two characters.  Who would have thought that a psychologist and a homosexual police detective would make for such an entertaining and enjoyable tandem?

In addition to the fantastic mystery and intriguing characters, this book contains a number of other great story elements for the reader to enjoy.  This includes the fantastic and detailed descriptions of the city of Los Angles.  Kellerman, a near life-long resident of the city of Los Angles, does an outstanding job of portraying the various components of city, and there is obvious affection for its many nuances and its inhabitants’ ways of life.  I also liked the psychological inclusions with The Wedding Guest.  The main character, Alex Delaware, is a child psychologist who assists with the police investigations and provides analyses of the suspects and the murderer.  While the psychological elements within The Wedding Guest are somewhat less prominent than in some of the other books in the series, such as the first book, When the Bough Breaks, it is still deeply fascinating, and it was intriguing to see things such as the character’s analysis of what kind of person the killer would be.

While did receive a physical copy of this book, I ended up choosing to listen to the audiobook format of The Wedding Guest, narrated by John Rubinstein.  This was an excellent way to the listen to this book, and at 12 hours and 20 minutes, it did not take me long to get through it.  Rubinstein does an incredible job of narrating this awesome story, and I felt that his fantastic voice really added a lot to this book.  The Wedding Guest is told from the point of view of the main character, Alex Delaware, and Rubinstein does a good base narration for everything the character sees and says.  I also really liked the other voices that Rubinstein does throughout this book, and he is able to impart some real personality into most of the other characters.  I especially loved the narration that he does for Milo, as he gives this character an exceptional cop voice that was really fun to listen to.  Overall, I felt that the audiobook version of this book was a great way to enjoy The Wedding Guest and I would strongly recommend this format.

The Wedding Guest was an excellent piece of crime fiction, containing a deeply compelling mystery that really drags the reader in and holds their attention for the entire book.  I quite enjoyed Kellerman’s use of characters and felt that it enhanced the mystery elements to create a wonderful overall story.  Easily accessible for those who have not read any of the previous books in the Alex Delaware series, The Wedding Guest is well worth checking out in both its paperback and audiobook formats.

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