THE CONSPIRACY CLUB

Jonathan Kellerman

Headline £16.99 hbk Nov 2003

Reviewed by Simon Kernick

Before The Conspiracy Club, I’d only read one of Kellerman’s books: the highly impressive Billy Straight, so I was looking forward to re-acquainting myself with his work.

In this his latest thriller the main protagonist, a dedicated young psychologist and all-round nice guy named Dr Jeremy Carrier, is trying to get over the brutal kidnapping and murder six months earlier of his girlfriend, a nurse who worked at the same hospital. Carrier was, and still is, viewed as a possible suspect by some in the local police department and when more young women start turning up dead in the same brutal fashion, the heat’s turned up on the young psychologist, leaving him little option but to have a nervous breakdown under the relentless pressure of being in the frame, culminating in him completely losing the power of speech. No, not really. Instead, more predictably, he starts hunting for the real killer himself.

At the same time, he becomes friendly with Dr Arthur Chess, a mysterious pathologist at the hospital who, somewhat bizarrely, seems to be providing Carrier with enigmatic hints as to who the killer might be rather than doing the decent thing and just telling him. Chess also introduces the far younger Carrier to a group of his friends who make up a secret society (the conspiracy club of the title), all of whom have fairly sizeable skeletons in their closets. Quite what they’re conspiring about isn’t immediately obvious and the reader is left to wonder what part, if any, they might be playing in the events going on around Carrier. Are Chess and his friends helping him to solve the murders, or are they actually something to do with them?

These questions and more are answered at the end of the story but the problem is the build-up to the climax is slow and curiously lacking in both emotion and urgency. This wasn’t helped by the fact that everything was seen from Carrier’s point of view, with ninety-five percent of the scenes taking place within the confines of the hospital, which tended to stifle the atmosphere. Carrier himself was not, in my opinion, an interesting enough character to warrant hogging the whole story, and the plot didn’t have the necessary twists and turns to make up for this.

Having said that, fans of Kellerman won’t be too disappointed, I suspect. He still writes with a lucidity unmatched by many authors, and continues to possess a keen eye for the world around him (although his lack of knowledge of modern English slang provides a few unintentional chuckles: see page 142). And, if nothing else, the book is quite an original take on the heavily flogged ‘killer on the loose, race against time to stop him striking again’ theme. I’d be surprised, however, if any of these same fans will remember The Conspiracy Club in years to come as his best effort.