Deception by Jonathan Kellerman

Kellerman, as we have come to expect, delivers a good, amusing read in Deception. Alex and Milo investigate the murder of a prep school teacher who has left a DVD behind accusing several members of the faculty of sexual harassment. The case has some delicate political implications because the chief of police's son is a student at the school, and any scandal there may affect his chances to get into Harvard, so the duo must tread carefully. As they start with the usual suspects and work their way through the less usual ones, things get twisty quickly, and the case never really untwists, it just becomes transparent at the end.

Kellerman does a good job of capturing the arrogance, smarminess and false intellectualism of the instructors at the prep school. When Milo is interviewing the staff there, he and Alex are fully aware of just how shallow these folks really are. There's a great scene where one of the instructors, unaware that Alex is a psychologist, attempts to baffle him with psycho-BS. I have to wonder how Kellerman really feels about the intellectual "elite" that our hallowed institutions of higher learning are turning out these days; is he serious, or just playing to the peanut gallery here?

Great characters, great dialogue, and a surprising ending make this a classic in the Alex Delaware series.