Guest Post By: Doug G

As the son of two best-selling authors, Jonathan and Faye Kellerman, Jesse Kellerman entered the literary world facing daunting expectations from critics and fans alike. He’s since met and surpassed such expectations, proving himself a highly capable and accomplished writer in his own right, winning the 2003 Princess Grace Award for his playwriting and receiving heaps of critical praise in 2006 for his debut novel Sunstroke.

In his latest book Trouble, a cross-genre work that’s one part psychological thriller, one part character study, Kellerman again immediately displays his formidable writing ability. From the story’s opening sentences he lines his pages with vivid descriptions, multi-dimensional characters and a slow-burning sense of suspense and impending dread that keeps the reader turning pages with increasing rapidity.

Unfortunately, for all of the skill on display Kellerman seems uncertain of what to do with it and the book slowly loses momentum and focus. With its plot meandering between the two genres it attempts to encompass, the story finally grinds to an unimpressive and unsatisfying conclusion.

Trouble tells the story of Jonah Stem, a twenty-something medical student living and working in Manhattan. Overworked and a bit of a pushover, Jonah’s life is upended when he comes upon a woman being stabbed in the street and makes the fateful decision to intervene. In the process of saving the woman’s life he accidentally kills her attacker, unleashing a Pandora’s Box of troubles: he’s overwhelmed by guilt, interrogated by the district attorney, and slapped with a lawsuit from the dead man’s family.

The only positive appears in the form of the woman whose life he saved, as a thank-you drink leads to a passionate love affair. Jonah’s happiness is short-lived however, as her masochistic tendencies rise to the surface and are only further inflamed when Jonah attempts to end their relationship. Finding himself relentlessly stalked, Jonah’s life quickly begins to unravel, rapidly descending from complicated to all-out nightmare.

It’s hard to argue with the quality of Kellerman’s writing. His descriptive accounts are near-cinematic. His characters come across the page naturally and effortlessly through their interactions with one another, and his pacing (at least initially) ebbs and flows perfectly between moments of tension and moments of perceived relief.

Unfortunately, good writing does not always make for good storytelling, and where Kellerman fails is in his seeming inability to decide what kind of story he wants to tell: is it a suspenseful cat-n-mouse thriller or a psychological study of one man’s loosening grip on his sanity? For the first half of the novel Kellerman seems to prefer the former and ably crafts a narrative of mounting tension that envelopes both the reader and his protagonist Jonah Stem.

Yet in the second half he abandons this track for the latter, allowing the story’s tension (as well as the reader’s concern for Jonah) to slowly deteriorate to near nothing, rendering any attempt to portray Jonah’s wavering grip on his sanity as forced. By the time Kellerman comes to the novel’s abrupt and unsatisfying conclusion, the reader is so far removed from the characters that little, if any, of the emotional impact Kellerman is reaching for is felt.

Ultimately, in his latest novel Trouble, Jesse Kellerman shows he has all the tools to be an effective storyteller, he just needs to decide which story he wants to tell.

Technorati Tags: Trouble, Jesse Kellerman, Book Review, Jonah Stem