{"product_id":"the-conspiracy-club-isbn-9780345540249","title":"The Conspiracy Club","description":"\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eNEW YORK TIMES \u003c\/i\u003eBESTSELLER\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e When his passionate romance with nurse Jocelyn Banks is cut short by her kidnapping and brutal murder, young psychologist Jeremy Carrier is left emotionally devastated, haunted by his lover’s grisly demise—and eyed warily by police still seeking a prime suspect in the slaying. \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e“An unnerving, highly cinematic plot . . . [Kellerman has] headed off into different terrain . . . with striking success in this . . . quick-witted outing.”—Janet Maslin, \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e To escape the pain, he buries himself in his work at City Central Hospital—only to be drawn deeper into a walking nightmare when more women are murdered in the same gruesome fashion as Jocelyn. As the suspicion surrounding Jeremy intensifies, the only way for him to prove his innocence and put his torment to rest is to follow the deadly trail of a modern-day Jack the Ripper.“Grabs the reader’s attention and never lets go.”—Associated Press\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “[Kellerman] keeps the creepiness coming until the big-twist finish.”—\u003ci\u003ePeople\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “Eerie . . . tantalizing.”—\u003ci\u003eEntertainment Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003eJonathan Kellerman\u003c\/b\u003e is the #1 \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e bestselling author of more than three dozen bestselling crime novels, including the Alex Delaware series, \u003ci\u003eThe Butcher’s Theater, Billy Straight, The Conspiracy Club,\u003c\/i\u003e \u003ci\u003eTwisted, \u003c\/i\u003eand\u003ci\u003e True Detectives\u003c\/i\u003e. With his wife, bestselling novelist Faye Kellerman, he co-authored \u003ci\u003eDouble Homicide \u003c\/i\u003eand\u003ci\u003e Capital Crimes\u003c\/i\u003e. With his son, bestselling novelist Jesse Kellerman, he co-authored the first book of a new series, \u003ci\u003eThe Golem of Hollywood\u003c\/i\u003e. He is also the author of two children’s books and numerous nonfiction works, including \u003ci\u003eSavage Spawn: Reflections on Violent Children \u003c\/i\u003eand\u003ci\u003e With Strings Attached: The Art and Beauty of Vintage Guitars\u003c\/i\u003e. He has won the Goldwyn, Edgar, and Anthony awards and has been nominated for a Shamus Award. Jonathan and Faye Kellerman live in California, New Mexico, and New York.\u003cb\u003e1\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eRaging emotions, dead tissue.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePolar opposites was the way Jeremy Carrier had always seen it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn a hospital setting, no two disciplines were less connected than psychology and pathology. As a practitioner of the former, Jeremy prided himself on an open mind; a good psychotherapist worked hard at avoiding stereotypes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut during all his years of training and clinical work at City Central Hospital, Jeremy had met few pathologists who didn’t fit a mold: withdrawn, mumbly types, more comfortable with gobbets of necrosed flesh, the abstract expressionism of cell smears, and the cold-storage ambience of the basement morgue, than with living, breathing patients.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd his fellow psychologists, psychiatrists, and all the other soldiers of the mental health army, were, more often than not, overly delicate souls repelled by the sight of blood.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNot that Jeremy had actually known any pathologists, even after a decade of passing them in the hallways. The social structure of the hospital had regressed to high school sensibilities: Us-Them as religion, a lusty proliferation of castes, cliques, and cabals, endless jockeying for power and turf. Adding to that was the end-means inversion that captures every bureaucracy: the hospital had devolved from a healing place needing funds to treat patients to a large-scale municipal employer requiring patient fees to meet its staff payroll.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAll that created a certain asocial flavor.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA confederacy of isolates.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAt City Central, like was attracted to like, and only the last-ditch necessities of patient care led to cross-pollination: internists finally admitting defeat and calling in surgeons, gen- eralists taking deep breaths before plunging into the morass of consultation.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhat reason could there be for a pathologist to contact a psychologist?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBecause of all that—and because life’s hellish wrist-flick had turned Jeremy Carrier into a tormented, distracted young man—he was caught off-balance by Arthur Chess’s overture.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePerhaps Jeremy’s distractibility formed the basis for all that followed.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFor nearly a year, Jeremy had seen Arthur once a week, but the two men had never exchanged a word. Yet here was Arthur, settling down opposite Jeremy in the doctors’ dining room and asking if Jeremy cared for company.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt was just before 3 p.m., an off-hour for lunch, and the room was nearly empty.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeremy said, “Sure,” then realized he was anything but.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eArthur nodded and settled his big frame into a small chair. His tray bore two helpings of fried chicken, a hillock of mashed potatoes glazed with gravy, a perfect square of corn bread, a small bowl of succotash, and a sweating can of Coca-Cola.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eStaring at the food, Jeremy wondered: Southern roots? He tried to recall if Arthur’s voice had ever betrayed Southern inflections, didn’t think so. If anything, the old man’s baritone was flavored by New England.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eArthur Chess showed no immediate interest in conversation. Spreading a napkin on his lap, he began shearing through the first piece of chicken. He cut quickly and gracefully, using long fingers tipped by broad nails stubbed short. His long white lab coat was snowy-clean but for a disturbing spatter of pinkish stains on the right sleeve. The shirt beneath the coat was a blue pinpoint Oxford spread-collar. Arthur’s magenta bow tie hung askew in a way that suggested intention.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeremy figured the pathologist for at least sixty-five, maybe older, but Arthur’s pink skin glowed with health. A neat, white, mustachless beard, which gave insight into what Lincoln’s would’ve looked like had Honest Abe been allowed to grow old, fringed Arthur’s long face. His bald head was lunar and imposing under cruel hospital lighting.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeremy knew of Arthur’s reputation the way one is aware of a stranger’s biography. Once Head of Pathology, Professor Chess had stepped down from administrative duties a few years ago to concentrate on scholarship. Something to do with soft-tissue sarcomas, the minutiae of cell-wall permeability, or whatnot.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eArthur also had a reputation as a world traveler and an amateur lepidopterist. His treatise on the carrion-eating butterflies of Australia had been featured in the hospital gift shop, alongside the usual paperback diversions. Jeremy had noticed the single stack of dry-looking, dirt brown volumes because they drabbed in comparison with the jackets of lurid best-sellers. The brown stack never seemed to reduce; why would a patient want to read about bugs that ate corpses?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eArthur ate three bites of chicken and put down his fork. “I really do hope this isn’t an intrusion, Dr. Carrier.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Not at all, Dr. Chess. Is there something you need?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Need?” Arthur was amused. “No, just seeking a bit of social discourse. I’ve noticed that you tend to dine alone.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“My schedule,” lied Jeremy. “Unpredictable.” Since his life had gone to hell, he’d been avoiding social discourse with anyone but patients. He’d gotten to the point where he could fake friendly. But sometimes, on the darkest of days, any human contact was painful.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLife’s little wrist-flick . . .\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Of course,” said Chess. “Given the nature of your work, that would have to be the case.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Sir?” said Jeremy.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“The unpredictability of human emotions.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“That’s true.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eArthur nodded gravely, as if the two of them had reached a momentous agreement. A moment later, he said, “Jeremy—may I call you Jeremy?—Jeremy, I noticed you weren’t at our little Tuesday get-together this week.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A situation came up,” said Jeremy, feeling like a child caught playing hookey. He forced a smile. “Unpredictable emotions.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Something that resolved well, I hope?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeremy nodded. “Anything new come up at T.B.?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Two new diagnoses, an adenosarcoma, and a CML. Typical presentations, the usual spirited discussion. To be honest, you didn’t miss a thing.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOur little Tuesday get-together was Tumor Board. A weekly ritual, 8 to 9 a.m., in the larger conference room, Arthur Chess presiding over a confab of oncologists, radiotherapists, surgeons, nurse specialists. Commanding the slide projector, wielding a light wand, and his voluminous memory.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFor nearly a year, Jeremy had been the mental health army’s representative. In all that time, he’d spoken up once.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe’d attended his first Tumor Board years before, as an intern, finding the experience an ironic grotesquerie: slides of tumor-ravaged cells click-clicked on a giant screen, the images obscured by nicotine haze.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAt least a third of the cancer doctors and nurses were puffing away.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeremy’s supervisor at the time, an astonishingly pompous psychoanalyst, had wielded a Meerschaum pipe of Freudian proportions and blown Latakia fumes in Jeremy’s face.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eArthur had been running things back then, too, and he’d looked much the same, Jeremy realized. The chief pathologist hadn’t smoked, but neither had he objected. A few months later, a wealthy benefactor touring the hospital poked her head in and gasped. Soon after, the hospital passed a no-smoking rule, and the mood at subsequent Tumor Boards grew testy.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eArthur sectioned a tiny square of corn bread from the host slab and chewed thoughtfully. “No loss for you, Jeremy, but I do believe that your presence contributes.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Really.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Even if you don’t say much, the fact that you’re there keeps the rest of us on our toes. Sensitivity-wise.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Well,” said Jeremy, wondering why the old man was bullshitting him so shamelessly, “anything that helps sensitivity.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“The time you did speak up,” said Arthur, “taught us all a lesson.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeremy felt his face go hot. “I felt it was relevant.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Oh, it was, Jeremy. Not everyone saw it that way, but it was.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe time he spoke up had been six weeks ago. Arthur flashing slides of a metastasized stomach carcinoma on the big screen, defining the tumors in the precise Latin poetry of histology. The patient, a fifty-eight-year-old woman named Anna Duran, had been referred to Jeremy because of “unresponsive demeanor.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeremy found her initially sullen. Rather than try to draw her out, he refilled her empty cup with tea, got himself coffee, plumped her pillows, then sat down by her bedside and waited.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNot caring much if she responded, or not. It had been that way since Jocelyn. He didn’t even try anymore.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd the funny thing was, patients reacted to his apathy by opening up more quickly.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eGrief had made him a more effective therapist.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeremy, flabbergasted, gave the matter some thought and decided patients probably perceived his blank face and statue posture as some sort of immutable, Zen-like calm.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIf only they knew . . .\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBy the time she finished her tea, Anna Duran was ready to talk.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhich is why Jeremy was forced to speak up, twenty minutes into a contentious exchange between Mrs. Duran’s attending oncologist and the treating radiotherapist. Both specialists were voluble men, well-intentioned, dedicated to their craft, but overly focused, baby-bathwater-tossers. Complicating matters further, neither cared for the other. That morning they’d slipped into an increasingly heated debate on treatment sequence that left the rest of the attendees peeking at their watches.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeremy had resolved to stay out of it. Tuesday mornings were an annoyance, his turn the result of a mandatory rotation that placed him in too-close proximity to death.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut that morning, something propelled him to his feet.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe sudden motion fixed fifty pairs of eyes upon him.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe oncologist had just completed a pronouncement.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe radiotherapist, about to embark on a response, was deterred by the look on Jeremy’s face.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eArthur Chess rolled the light wand between his hands. “Yes, Dr. Carrier?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeremy faced the sparring physicians. “Gentlemen, your debate may be justified on medical grounds, but you’re wasting your time. Mrs. Duran won’t agree to any form of treatment.”#1 New York Times bestselling author; Author of Guilt","brand":"Ballantine Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46301354983653,"sku":"NP9780345540249","price":9.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780345540249.jpg?v=1767738824","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/the-conspiracy-club-isbn-9780345540249","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}