KELLERMAN, JONATHAN

KELLERMAN, JONATHAN (1949– ), U.S. mystery writer, psychologist. Kellerman, who was born in New York City and grew up in Los Angeles, received a bachelor's degree in psychology from the University of California at Los Angeles and a doctorate in psychology from the University of Southern California, where he became clinical professor of pediatrics at the School of Medicine. His internship and postdoctoral fellowship were at the Children's Hospital/School of Medicine, where he became founding director of the Psychosocial Program, Division of Hematology-Oncology. He is the author of numerous articles in the scientific and popular press, three books on psychology, including Psychological Aspects of Childhood Cancer and Helping the Fearful Child, two children's books, Daddy, Daddy, Can You Touch the Sky? and Jonathan Kellerman's ABC of Weird Creatures, which he also illustrated, and about 20 consecutive bestselling novels. After a decade of nonsuccess in his writing career, his first published work, When the Bough Breaks (1985), sold more than a million copies and kick-started his career. He has continued at a rate of about one a year since. Most of the books feature a pair of friends, Dr. Alex Delaware, a sensitive child psychologist, and the more macho Milo Sturgis of the Los Angeles Police Department, who happens to be a homosexual. Some of his novels, like Dr. Death, about a self-styled euthanasia champion, seem to have been inspired by people in the news or by then-current news events. All are considered fast-paced, intense, and edgy. Like his wife, faye kellerman , he is a practicing Orthodox Jew. (Stewart Kampel (2nd ed.)