When the Bough Breaks (Alex Delaware, Bk. 1)

Dr. Morton Hander practiced a strange brand of psychiatry. Among his specialties were fraud, extortion, and sexual manipulation. Hander paid for his sins when he was brutally murdered in his luxurious Pacific Palisades apartment. The police have no leads, but they do have one possible witness: seven-year-old Melody Quinn.

It’s psychologist Dr. Alex Delaware’s job to try to unlock the terrible secret buried in Meldoy’s memory. But as the sinister shadows in the girl’s mind begin to take shape, Alex discovers that the mystery touches a shocking incident in his own past. And behind it lies an unspeakable evil that Alex Delaware must expose before it claims another innocent victim.

“An engrossing thriller . . . This knockout of an entertainment is the kind of book which establishes a career in one stroke.”—Newsday