The fingers she offered were flash-frozen shoestring potatoes.

There’s hardly any point in me reviewing the latest Alex Delaware mystery by Jonathan Kellerman. I like the series immensely, and the books are uniformly excellent. Night Moves is no exception, though I’ll admit I did get lost in places.

Chet Corvin lives in an upscale suburb of Los Angeles with his wife and two children. He’s a braggart, and pushy, which works for him at his job, but makes him a pain to anyone who knows him. He’s outraged when he and his family come home from a night out to find a dead body in his den. The victim wasn’t killed there – there’s no blood splattered around – but his face has been obliterated by a shotgun blast and his hands have been cut off.

Det. Lt. Milo Sturgis catches the case, and he again brings in his friend Alex Delaware, psychologist, as a consultant. The Corvin family is a study – cold wife, withdrawn teenaged daughter, rebellious son. There’s also a weird next-door neighbor – an older, unsocial artist who was once a famous underground cartoonist, back in the hippie era. His classic work is pretty creepy; Milo would definitely like to talk to him, but he won’t even answer the door.

One lead after another turns into a dead end. As Alex and Milo manage to learn one after another hard-won fact, bodies pile up and they begin to uncover the tracks of a complex, improbable, and shocking serial killer.

What I love most about the Alex Delaware books is his treatment of the characters. Author Kellerman loves to explode our preconceptions. Again and again we are introduced to people who invite snap judgment, but prove on closer acquaintance to be complex and full of surprises. I did kind of lose track of the multiple plot threads this time around – but that may just be a function of me getting old.

Recommended, for older teens and up. Cautions for the usual. Good stuff.