Detective Sturgis And Dr Devane example essay topic

The Clinic By: Jonathan Kellerman The Clinic is one of a series of Alex Delaware novels written by Jonathan Kellerman. Alex Delaware is a psychology doctor who is often employed by the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) to provide psychological profiles of both victims and killers. The book is 465 pages long. In this novel Dr. Delaware has been asked to provide a psychological profile of the victim of a particularly gruesome murder. The victim is Professor Hope Devane, who was found murdered under a large elm tree in front of her home. She was stabbed three times; once in the heart; once in the groin; and once in the back.

The only clue was a bicycle track left at the scene. The murder had occurred three months ago and the case had been turned over to a different detective, Milo Sturgis, due to the lack of progress in solving the case. Milo Sturgis is a personal friend of Dr. Alex Delaware and requested his assistance. Very little was known about Professor Hope Devane and Detective Sturgis asked Dr. Delaware to compile a psychological profile of her. Professor Devane had written a male-bashing book entitled "Wolves and Sheep". The book had created quite a controversy and Professor Devane had appeared on numerous talk shows.

Dr. Delaware discovered that Professor Devane had set up a committee at the university where she was employed. This committee was established to assist students who claimed to have been sexually harassed by other students. There were only three cases handled by the committee before the head of the university dissolved it. Detective Sturgis and Dr. Delaware decide that it would be a good idea for Dr. Delaware to locate and interview both the members of the committee and the individuals involved in the three cases. There were only three members of the committee. The members were Professor Hope Devane, another professor at the university, and a student named Casey Locking.

The professor who served on the committee told Dr. Delaware that she only sat in on two of the cases and then dropped out because she felt the committee was too radical. She also said that Professor Devane exhibited signs of someone who might have been abused herself. Dr. Delaware interviewed the students involved in the three cases, with the exception of one young woman who seemed terrified. This girl claimed to have been raped by a fellow student who was a drama major.

Dr. Delaware was able to talk to the man who was accused of raping the girl. The man had dropped out of school to take a job on a soap opera. The job, however, did not pan out. Through the efforts of both Detective Sturgis and Dr. Devane they discover that Professor Devane's mother had kept her locked up many times when she was a child. Her mother was a prostitute. They also discovered that Professor Devane had received considerable amounts of money from a Dr. Cruvic who was a fertility doctor in Los Angeles and also donated time at a clinic for women who couldn't afford medical care.

Detective Sturgis ran a profile of the murder through the computer to see if any other murders like this one had occurred anywhere else. One murder with the same MO was discovered in Las Vegas. Detective Sturgis was trying to link the woman murdered in Las Vegas with Professor Devane. Detective Sturgis and Dr. Delaware discover that Dr. Cruvic was the son of a gangster who was an associate of Hope Devane's mother and that Hope had grown up with Dr. Cruvic. Dr. Cruvic's father is still alive, but in very bad health. He had just recently received his second kidney transplant.

The murderer turns out to be the acting student who was called before Professor Devane's committee for raping a girl. Professor Devane did not like him so she set him up with Dr. Cruvic. Dr. Cruvic, it seems, had removed one of the man's kidneys without his permission. The surgery also left a terrible scar which kept the man from getting the job on the soap opera because the role required partial nudity. The prostitute from Las Vegas is the one who drugged him and then Dr. Cruvic performed the surgery and left him in an alley. The man therefore hated Professor Devane, Dr. Cruvic and the prostitute who had set him up and murdered all of them except Dr. Cruvic, who was next on his list.

This was a very good book. I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys a good mystery. There are a lot of twists and turns in the plot which keep you interested.