Jigsaw Book Summary: An Alex Delaware Crime Thriller
TL;DR: Jigsaw Summary: A Killer Hiding in Plain Sight
A woman is found strangled at her kitchen table, with two cigarette butts planted beside her that point straight to an ex-boyfriend who was 120 miles away when she died.
That contradiction pulls LAPD Lieutenant Milo Sturgis and psychologist Dr. Alex Delaware into a case that refuses to stay small.
Jigsaw: An Alex Delaware Novel by Jonathan Kellerman follows the pair through Los Angeles County, from Beverly Hills addresses to landfill trash piles.
What begins as one staged murder expands into three killings, an old law enforcement task force, a buried lawsuit scheme, and a killer with a long memory.
Readers who follow long-running procedural series, forensic clue-chasing, and L.A. noir with a psychological edge are the natural audience for this entry.
👉 Watch on YouTube: Jigsaw Summary & Recap
- The setup: A murder victim is framed evidence, and the obvious suspect has an unbreakable alibi.
- The escalation: A retired LAPD detective is found strangled and dismembered inside her own garage freezer.
- The link: Both victims connect to a disgraced attorney’s collapsed task force investigation from years earlier.
- The chase: Delaware and Sturgis trace a former Playboy model with a beauty-pageant past and a woodworking hobby.
- The outcome: Three murders, one confession, and a 40-years-to-life plea deal.
Jigsaw Summary: The Full Story (Spoilers Ahead)
Spoiler warning: This section covers the plot, the killer’s identity, and the ending.
Lieutenant Milo Sturgis brings psychologist Alex Delaware a case he cannot move past.
Sophie Barlow, a 38-year-old real estate office manager from Tulsa, has been strangled at her kitchen table in West L.A.
Two Marlboro Gold cigarette butts sit in a plastic bowl nearby, and DNA from them matches Michael Heck, her ex-boyfriend.
Heck’s attorney, Bettina Bel Geddes, arrives with time-stamped CCTV, keycard logs, and hotel receipts placing him in La Jolla with a blonde woman at the time of death.
Milo concludes someone collected Heck’s discarded butts and planted them deliberately.
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Before that thread untangles, a second body surfaces. Officers responding to a welfare check at a neglected house find 72-year-old Martha Joline Matthias strangled inside a running garage deep-freeze, her arms severed at the shoulders and folded across her chest.
Martha was a pioneering LAPD homicide detective who later transferred to Fraud. Alex and Milo walk the scene with Detective Alicia Bogomil and pathologist Dr. Basia Lopatinski. The house is a hoarder’s palace, stacked ceiling-high with two decades of newspapers.
Inside that clutter, the crime lab team finds $60,000 in cash, some in manila envelopes and $50,000 slit into the mattress. Tool-mark analysis shows Martha was manually strangled and her arms cut off after death with a fine-toothed saw, such as a coping saw or jigsaw.
A neighbor, Lionel Hawkins, reports a stiff-gaited woman in her late forties visiting Martha’s back door. Personnel records reveal Martha listed one dependent: a 46-year-old daughter named Lynne Gutierrez.
Alex and Milo meet Heck at the Chelsea Club in West Hollywood with Bel Geddes and his therapist, Dr. Wendy Allemande. Heck is frightened and cooperative. He mentions his old boss, Darren Alberts, a personal injury attorney who pulled in over $100 million in toxic-tort payouts before an indictment for grand theft, fraud, and money laundering.
Alex checks with neuropsychologist Dr. Lee Falkenburg, who confirms Alberts is vegetative from end-stage dementia and incapable of directing anything. Meanwhile, Alex locates Lynne Gutierrez through Safe Place, a West L.A. residence for developmentally disabled adults.
Director Pamela Buttons and coach David Le Gallee describe Lynne as gentle and quiet, with a speech impediment and arthritis. She collected magazines, ribbons, and toys. She had been missing more than a week after leaving to visit her mother.
A third discovery follows. Detective Hector Villalobos of LAPD Central Division calls about a foot protruding from a trash pile at an Irwindale landfill. DNA matches samples from the futon in Martha’s bedroom. The body is Lynne Gutierrez.
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Lynne died from three crushing blows to the back of her skull with a heavy round object, was wrapped in an industrial garbage bag, and was dumped in a downtown alley bin.
Alex points out the statistical absurdity of three non-firearm, non-blade homicides inside two weeks.
He proposes a single killer and connects Martha to the multi-agency task force that investigated Darren Alberts seven to eight years earlier.
Detective Bogomil then finds parking lot footage from the La Jolla hotel showing Bel Geddes pulling off a platinum blonde wig beside Heck’s BMW.
Confronted outside her Beverly Hills home with obstruction and fraud charges, Bel Geddes loses her footing. Heck turns on her, admitting the false-arrest scheme was her plan to generate a multi-million-dollar civil suit against the LAPD.
Heck then gives up a name. He had an affair with Alberts’s third wife, Tiana Crown, born Rhonda Lee Cronin — a former Playboy model, beauty queen, and bodybuilder with dominant tendencies, a steroid and weapons history, and a habit of building crude wooden birdhouses with hand saws.
Heck describes her rage. She hated him for leaving her for Sophie Barlow, hated Sophie out of jealousy, and hated Martha Matthias.
During the Alberts investigation, Tiana demanded leniency and money in Martha’s office; Martha refused, and Tiana drew a finger across her throat.
Records show Rhonda Cronin was arrested at 19 in Albuquerque for smashing a rival beauty contestant over the head with a pool cue. Her dark-blue Toyota Highlander, registered under ghost documentation with expired tags, matches the vehicle used to dump Lynne.
Tiana had also volunteered at Safe Place for six months. There she met Lynne, learned where Martha lived, and followed Lynne home.
Detectives track the Highlander to the downtown alley dumpster where Lynne’s body was discarded. Surrounded, Tiana pulls a hobby craft knife and slashes Detective Villalobos’s wrist. Detective Sean Binchy holds her at gunpoint until she drops it.
Her handbag contains a mini-jigsaw identical to the tool used on Martha. Searches of her apartment turn up Lynne’s blood on a heavy barbell bar and Martha’s blood on a woodworking saw.
In custody, Tiana confesses without hesitation. She strangled Sophie Barlow to put “a hole in Heck’s soul” and frame him with his own stolen cigarette butts.
She strangled Martha Matthias out of revenge for the cold treatment years earlier, then severed the arms with a mini-jigsaw so the body would fit the freezer.
She bludgeoned Lynne Gutierrez with a barbell weight bar, claiming she was putting the disabled woman “out of her misery” after killing her mother.
Faced with the forensic pile, Tiana accepts a plea deal from Deputy D.A. John Nguyen: 40 years to life at the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla.
Five months later, Alex receives a letter from prison. Tiana boasts about her 640-acre home, her birdhouses for charity, and calls him “The Boss” and “Too Cute For His Own Good.” Alex files the letter away with the case.
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Who’s Who in Jigsaw
| Character | Role |
|---|---|
| Dr. Alex Delaware | Clinical psychologist and first-person narrator who consults on LAPD homicides. |
| Lieutenant Milo Sturgis | LAPD homicide lieutenant who leads the investigation and enlists Delaware. |
| Tiana Crown (Rhonda Lee Cronin) | Former model and bodybuilder who commits all three murders. |
| Sophie Barlow | Real estate office manager strangled at her kitchen table. |
| Martha Joline Matthias | Retired LAPD detective found strangled and dismembered in her garage freezer. |
| Lynne Gutierrez | Martha’s developmentally disabled daughter, bludgeoned and dumped in a landfill bin. |
| Michael Heck | Law office administrator framed with planted cigarette butts. |
| Bettina Bel Geddes | Century City litigator who stages Heck’s false arrest to sue the LAPD. |
| Darren Alberts | Disgraced personal injury attorney now vegetative from dementia. |
| Detective Alicia Bogomil | LAPD detective who uncovers the La Jolla parking lot footage. |
| Detective Sean Binchy | LAPD detective who apprehends Tiana at gunpoint. |
| Detective Hector Villalobos | Central Division detective on the landfill case, injured during the arrest. |
| Dr. Basia Lopatinski | Forensic pathologist who autopsies Martha and Lynne. |
| Robin Castagna | Delaware’s partner and a luthier who advises on woodworking tools. |
Books Like Jigsaw
- The Murder Book by Jonathan Kellerman — Another Alex Delaware case built on old L.A. files and buried institutional secrets.
- The Concrete Blonde by Michael Connelly — Harry Bosch works an LAPD killing with courtroom maneuvering and forensic pressure.
- Postmortem by Patricia Cornwell — Kay Scarpetta investigates serial strangulation through pathology and tool-mark evidence.
- The Bone Collector by Jeffery Deaver — An analytical pair reads obscure physical evidence left by a calculating killer.
- In the Woods by Tana French — A psychological murder investigation shaped by past trauma and slow procedural digging.
- The Ghost Orchid by Jonathan Kellerman — A later Delaware entry pairing the same psychologist and detective on a cold case.
Jigsaw: Book Details at a Glance
- Genre & Subgenre: Mystery / Crime Thriller / Police Procedural / Psychological Suspense
- Core Narrative Tropes: Mismatched investigator duo; framed suspect with an alibi; resurfacing cold corruption; serial revenge killer; hoarder’s hidden cash
- Tone & Atmosphere: Gritty L.A. noir, clinical and introspective, dark with dry humor
- Primary Conflict: Linking three bizarrely executed murders before a false conviction sticks or the killer strikes again
- Pacing Style: Methodical and clue-driven, moving between forensic scenes, interviews, and sharp bursts of tension
- Book Structure: 46 chapters, continuous linear first-person narrative with no titled parts
- ISBN: 978-0593497715 (ISBN-10: 0593497716)
- Pages: 256
- Series: Book 41 of 42 in the Alex Delaware series
