Munchausen's by proxy | Devil's Waltz (Alex Delaware)

Searching for a 'monster parent' | Devil's Waltz (Alex Delaware) | Jonathan Kellerman

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	• Devil's Waltz (Alex Delaware) Jonathan Kellerman Ballantine Books, 2003 - 528 pages average customer review:based on 26 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Overdetailed

Perhaps the author is paid by the word, we get full details of carpet color and type, wallpaper colors, the artwork, name dropping at its worst, medical terms that I didn't know and weren't explained,Kellerman seems to get to the heart of the mystery too soon and then it drags and drags to the end, it will help the insomniacs to get some rest though.

Munchausen's by proxy

I found Devil's Waltz to be a fast, exciting read and can thoroughly recommend it. Psychologist/detective, Dr.Alex Delaware is called as a consultant to a case in a run down hospital in Los Angeles, where a 21 month old girl,Cassie Jones, is brought repeatedly, suffering from inexplicable symptoms, ranging from breathing difficulties to gastro intestinal problems. The doctors run all the usual tests on her but can find no obvious cause of her illnesses. Suspicion focuses on her mother, Cindy, a nervous young woman who is married to the son of a multi millionaire, Chuck Jones. Departments are being closed down at this particular hospital where the finances are now in the control of Jones, and the whole structure of the institution is being allowed to slide into decay. The ugly spectre of Munchausen's by proxy occurs to both Alex and the other doctors who monitor Cindy's visits to Cassie but can find no evidence to support their theory. Readers who love Jonathan Kellerman's work will relish this book.

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Searching for a 'monster parent'

This is a good page-turner about psychologist sleuth Alex Delaware. In this
mystery he is looking for a 'monster parent' - someone committing Much-
ausen by Proxy on their child. This means that the parent is faking medical
symptoms in their child by intentionally harming them.

The mystery also involves hospital politics, sundry murders, and romantic
intrigue.

It is very good until the ending. The characters are never explored much so
you're left with the big 'why?'. If Kellerman can do more character develop-
ment, it would be a tremendous improvement.

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Puzzling!

Devil's Waltz by Jonathan Kellerman has Alex called in on a consult at his old hospital by a doctor who suspects the increasing visits to the hospital by a toddler with mysteriously changing aliments may be caused by someone close to her suffering from Munchausen by proxy. This harrowing mental illness drives a person to make children sick so they can gain attention from various medical people and family members.
Each time the child is bought to the hospital she is in worse condition and Alex recruits fiend Milo to help him sift through the suspects. He's totally baffled by who is making the child sick and how they are doing it. The one thing he's sure of is the child will not live much longer if he can't solve the mystery quickly. Alex suspects the previous death of the child's baby brother was not due to natural causes, but the hospital records are missing and the two people that handled them last have been murdered.
The issues get even more confusing when Alex and Milo begin to suspect hospital's administrators of carrying out some sort of financial plot against the hospital. It soon becomes one of those who's doing what to whom things where everybody knows something's going on, but nobody can figure out what it is. The clues are subtle, but once the mystery is solved, just like Alex, you wonder why you didn't see it. This story makes for an excellent read.

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The doctors call it Munchausen by proxy, the  terrifying disease that causes parents to induce  illness in their own children. Now, in his most  frightening case, Dr. Alex Delaware may have to prove  that a child's own mother or father is making her  sick.

Twenty-one-month-old Cassie Jones  is bright, energetic, the picture of health. Yet  her parents rush her to the emergency room night  after night with medical symptoms no doctor can  explain. Cassie's parents seem sympathetic and  deeply concerned. Her favorite nurse is a model of  devotion. Yet when child psychologist Alex  Delaware is called in to investigate, instinct tells him  that one of them may be a monster.

Then  a physician at the hospital is brutally murdered.  A shadowy death is revealed. And Alex and his  friend LAPD detective Milo Sturgis have only hours  to uncover the link between these shocking events  and the fate of an innocent child.

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