After a distinguished career in child psychology, Jonathan Kellerman turned to writing fiction full-time. Today there are more than fourteen million copies of his novels in print: When the Bough Breaks, Blood Test, Over the Edge, Silent Partner, Time Bomb, Private Eyes, Devil's Waltz (all Delaware novels), and The Butcher's Theater, a novel of serial killings in Jerusalem. He is also the author of two volumes of psychology and a soon to be published children's book, Daddy, Daddy, Can You Touch the Sky? He and his wife, the novelist Faye Kellerman, have four children.

BOOKS BY JONATHAN KELLERMAN

BOOKS BY JONATHAN KELLERMAN

FICTION:

Billy Straight (1998)

Survival of the Fittest (1997)

The Clinic (1997)

The Web (1996)

Self-Defense (1995)

Bad Love (1994)

Devil's Waltz (1993)

Private Eyes (1992)

Time Bomb (1990)

Silent Partner (1989)

The Butcher's Theater (1988)

Over the Edge (1987)

Blood Test (1986)

When the Bough Breaks (1985)

NONFICTION:

Helping the Fearful Child (1981)

Psychological Aspects of Childhood Cancer (1980)

FOR CHILDREN, WRITTEN AND ILLUSTRATED:

Jonathan Kellerman's ABC of Weird Creatures (1995)

Daddy, Daddy, Can You Touch the Sky? (1994)

PREVIEW OF A COLD HEART

Turn the page for an excerpt from
Jonathan Kellerman's
new Alex Delaware novel

A COLD HEART

Available in hardcover
from Ballantine Books

CHAPTER

1

The witness remembers it like this:   Shortly after two A.M., Baby Boy Lee exits The Snake Pit through the rear alley fire door. The light fixture above the door is set up for two bulbs, but one is missing, and the illumination that trickles down onto the garbage-flecked asphalt is feeble and oblique, casting a grimy mustard-colored disc, perhaps three feet in diameter. Whether or not the missing bulb is intentional will remain conjecture.

It is Baby Boy's second and final break of the evening. His contract with the club calls for a pair of one-hour sets. Lee and the band have run over their first set by twenty-two minutes because of Baby Boy's extended guitar and harmonica solos. The audience, a nearly full house of 124, is thrilled. The Pit is a far cry from the venues Baby Boy played in his heyday, but he appears to be happy, too.

It has been a while since Baby Boy has taken the stage anywhere and played coherent blues. Audience members questioned later are unanimous: Never has the big man sounded better.

Baby Boy is said to have finally broken free of a host of addictions, but one habit remains: nicotine. He smokes three packs of Kools a day, taking deep-in-the-lung drags while on stage, and his guitars are notable for the black, lozenge-shaped burn marks that scar their lacquered wood finishes.

Tonight, though, Baby Boy has been uncommonly focused, rarely removing lit cigarettes from where he customarily jams them: just above the nut of his '62 Telecaster, wedged under the three highest strings.

So it is probably a tobacco itch that causes the singer to leap offstage the moment he plays his final note, flinging his bulk out the back door without a word to his band or anyone else. The bolt clicks behind him, but it is doubtful he notices.