Sammy Lazarus is now in Einstein Medical School in New York. He is engaged to his longtime girlfriend, Rachel, who is also at Einstein but a year behind her fiancé. They both want to finish school before they marry. Jacob Lazarus is studying molecular biology at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. He also has a steady girlfriend, named Ilana. Hannah Decker is sixteen. Driver’s license in hand, she prides herself on being completely independent except when she needs money. She adores her parents even though she sometimes considers them a little wacky. But unlike a lot of her friends, she still talks to her parents, confiding intimate details of her life that sometimes Decker feels he’d be better off not knowing. She has many male admirers, although at the moment she is without a boyfriend. This pleases her father immensely.

Where the future will take them is anyone’s guess, including my own. I don’t schedule their lives; I don’t formulate their adventures. Peter and Rina live like any other married couple with children, one day at a time. I’m grateful that from time to time they decide to include me in their plans.

Born in New York City in 1949, Jonathan Kellerman grew up in Los Angeles, receiving a BA in psychology from UCLA and a PhD in psychology from the University of Southern California. He worked his way through school as an editorial cartoonist, a columnist, an editor, and a musician. He went on to become a clinical professor of pediatrics at the Keck School of Medicine. His first two books were about medicine: Psychological Aspects of Childhood Cancer (1980) and Helping the Fearful Child (1981).

His first mystery, When the Bough Breaks (1985), introduced Alex Delaware and won the Edgar Allan Poe Award from the Mystery Writers of America. It also won the Anthony Award at the World Mystery Convention (Bouchercon) and became a New York Times bestseller as well as a television movie.

In addition to the perennially bestselling Delaware series, he has written four novels about a beautiful Los Angeles homicide detective with a complicated past, Petra Connor: Survival of the Fittest (1997), Billy Straight (1998), Twisted (2004), and Obsession (2007); two stand-alone bestsellers with his wife, Faye Kellerman (also a bestselling author and the creator of the Peter Decker and Rina Lazarus series): The Butcher’s Theater (1988), The Conspiracy Club (2003), and Capital Crimes (2007); and two children’s books: Daddy, Daddy, Can You Touch the Sky? (1994) and Jonathan Kellerman’s ABC of Weird Creatures (1995).

The Kellermans have four children, one of whom, Jesse Kellerman, is also a professional writer of crime fiction. They live in Southern California.

Back when I practiced child clinical psychology, if you visited my private office in Sherman Oaks, California; or my hospital digs at Childrens Hospital of LA, in east Hollywood; or the suite I shared with two pediatricians in Glendale, you’d find few clues about my personal life.

No photos of the wife or the kids propped on the desk, no shots of me driving fast cars or playing guitar or posed with Faye in Hawaii or Paris or Santa Fe or Jerusalem. Nothing but a few framed diplomas.

The successful-and ethical-practice of psychotherapy depends upon a thorough ego vacuuming: putting your own needs, desires, conceits, and fantasies into cold storage during the forty-five minutes you spend facing another human being in emotional crisis. Realizing it’s all about that person and not about you.

According to some schools of psychotherapeutic thought, an occasional smidgeon of “self-disclosure”-dribbling out judicious bits of autobiography in the name of empathy-can benefit the patient. But even proponents of that open approach are clear that the only shrinks qualified to risk exploiting their private lives as therapeutic tools need to be experienced, rigorously self-appraising, and acutely aware of psychological boundaries-the precise spots where they end and the patient begins.

One cardinal trait of an effective psychotherapist is the ability to “actively listen,” a talent that transcends gimmicky phrases such as “I hear what you’re saying” and depends on a sincere suspension of the judgmental self as well as a genuine interest in the emotional life of the patient. After a few years, learning to listen on twelve cylinders can carry over to the so-called real world. You start to do it outside the office.

During my years as a psychologist, I prided myself on not playing shrink with my loved ones; when I left work, I was intent on being just another husband-dad. Sure, I’d try to be patient and sensitive, but I also needed to be free to occasionally lose my temper, pass judgment, and, yeah, even discipline the kids if they needed it. One of the nicest things my acclaimed novelist son, Jesse, ever told me was “Dad, you never treated me like a patient.” (Jesse’s a great guy and a terrific son, but I’m sure there were many less charitable appraisals by him and his three sisters when I blew my stack or otherwise indulged a sometimes bellicose nature.)

Despite all that, there were times when I’d like to think my training helped me as a father. I understood the developmental stages that affected children’s thoughts and feelings. I got that while kids weren’t miniature adults, they deserved to be treated with respect. Perhaps most important, I realized that quality time wasn’t sufficient; you needed quantity time. I spent a lot of time with my kids, and when I wrote fiction in my home office-which was, and still is, festooned with personal stuff-the door was always open, literally and figuratively.

When I wasn’t the cause of my kid’s problems, I tried to be part of the solution by actively listening.

I haven’t treated patients in a decade and a half, but there are occasions when I still slip into listening mode. That’s because I’m an extremely, perhaps pathologically, curious guy, genuinely interested in other people and the stories they tell. That has led to what my kids describe as “Uh-oh, Dad made a new friend.”

Hence, the guy in the Southwest Airlines departure barn at Albuquerque Airport who started schmoozing with me during a two-hour delay getting back to LA after a family vacation in Santa Fe. He was an interesting fellow who fixed mammoth oil rigs for a living, often under storm conditions. He had a lot to say about the challenges of his job and his life, and I listened. I learned a lot about heavy equipment and life on the Texas gulf.

Then there was the leather-clad former corporate CEO I ran into at a Malibu restaurant who now filled his spare time with cross-country jaunts on his Harley.

The woman who planned high-level parties in Washington, DC, and had met quite a few… interesting people.

The kidney transplant surgeon who used to own a country music station and now bought insurance companies, aiming for one purchase a year.

The former child actress who sold real estate. The septuagenarian great-grandfather who washed cars for a living and spent his free time Rollerblading.

Et cetera.

People talk to me; I listen.

Nothing bores me more than my own story. I want to hear about other people’s lives, and the only way to do that is to Stay Out of the Picture.

I mention all this because it goes a long way toward explaining Alex Delaware and the structure of the novels that feature him.

People talk to him; he does his best to keep the focus on them.

When I was twenty-one, I won a literary prize and thought I was hot stuff.