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Title: Street Dreams by Faye Kellerman ISBN: 0-446-53131-6 Publisher: Warner Books Pub. Date: 05 August, 2003 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $25.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.76 (38 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: I've been really disappointed....
Comment: in the way Kellerman had let this series meander in her last two outings "The Forgotten" and "Stone Kiss". Unlike many of the other readers I want to applaud this latest effort, picking up on Cindy Decker as the main character, and continuing her story from "Stalker".
It is true that if you haven't read the series, this book won't work for you. But like many patient readers of "series" mystery and thrillers, I get a little tired of the time and effort spent recapping the series for new readers. At some point, (and this is the 16th book in series), an author needs to cater to the fans that have been loyal enough to follow the series.....so, the action picks up without a lot of background noise on either Cindy or parents Peter/Rina -- a welcome relief.
Cindy's police work is supplemented this time by a much more realistic love story than her affair with a detective in "Stalker". Koby, the man she meets and falls in love with, is perhaps drawn too physically, but the sexual energy and attraction between them shines through, much like the early books portrayed the link between Peter and Rina. For once, Peter and Rina take a trip/vacation where there is no need for police work, and no family to "save" (thank goodness!)...their backdrop of searching for Rina's family past in Europe is a nice, humanistic setting for the primary story.
Cindy's got an interesting, realistic crime to solve, and there is some danger, along with a lot of help and advice from her father and Koby. The book moves rapidly, with the love and family stories seamlessly meshing with the police work.
If Kellerman can follow this book up with a winner, starring the new couple, she might be the first contemporary serial writer to successfully move her stories from one generation to another; an interesting accomplishment.
More!
Rating: 5
Summary: Cracking the Maze of rape , murder and thuggery
Comment: Street Dreams is yet another thrilling page turner by Faye Kellerman.
When LAPD officer Cynthia Decker finds an abandoned infant in a downtown rubbish dump, the hunt is on for clues, through the murky world of inner city Hollywood.
Cindy finds her love interest in an Ethiopian-Israeli male nurse, with lots of charm and mystique - Yaakov Kutiel 9the book focuses much on Cindy and Yaakov's steamy romance) , and soon joins up with her father Lieutenant Peter Decker, in cracking open a maze of rape and murder, in many sleazy and dangerous corners.
It is a story of the vicious thugs that pray on the innocent.
A side story takes place as Rina, Peter Decker's beautiful Orthodox wife does some of her own detective wife, also roping in 'Loo' Decker, to find out about the murder of her grandmother in Munich, Germany, in 1928.
Hence the story is set against the backdrop of both the rise of the Nazi regime in Germany , in the 1930's and the war of Arafat and his PLO mass murderers to eliminate the Jewish state today - the preparation for another holocaust of Jews.
The backdrop of the criminal motivated murder on the streets of LA is shadowed by the murder of Jews in Israel today, and in Europe so many centuries ago.
Rating: 4
Summary: A female Jewish Cop in LAPD, hard hard hard!
Comment: This is a detective story of a new style. In a way an inside story of the LAPD. Cynthia Decker is a cop on the beat in Hollywood. We follow her step by step in a period of her professional life, her transition year from officer to detective. This period is centered on one particular case : the story of Sarah Sanders and her discarded baby. This leads to exploring the world of handicaped people in LA, their problems, their reactions to life and their ways of thinking and behaving. But this also leads to a network or gang of people who are taking advantage of retarded women with a gang rape and a shadowy character who seduces them, uses them and then discards them. Violence is of course part of the picture : a man is beaten up, a woman is hit and run to death, Cynthia Decker is the victim of an attemped murder, etc. But the interest of the book goes a lot farther. It explores the institution known as the LAPD, its inside rivalries, careerism and ambitions, its legal limitations that prevent efficiency, and the necessity at times to go beyond these limits to get the information and the lead an investigation needs, and even the difficulty for women to be really equal in this institution that is definitely male-dominated. Even further it explores the problem of racism inside the institution and of the insritution towards society at large : racial prejudice is an everyday reality and it requires a lot of work to get rid of it or at least to neutralize it. But even further, Cynthia Decker being Jewish, it goes into exploring the Jewish community she lives in, with openings to the old antisemitism of Germany in the 30s, to antisemitism in America today, to the Jewish commmunity spirit both religious and social or cultural, etc. This exploration of Jewish culture is extremely interesting and it is the basis of the motivations of several characters in the book as for their involvement in police work and hospital work. The book brings the case to an end which is in a way a satisfying ending giving answers to all the questions asked in the novel. It has a few flaws that limit the effectiveness of the reasoning. For instance, the fact that the killer is an Iraqi disguising himself as a Mexican is a little bit easy. Sex offenders come from all walks of life and all social strata. It would have been a lot more effective if this character had been a plain American citizen, because most offenders in this field are plain American people, in general plain citizens in any country who are characterized most of the time as simple, lackluster and just nice neighbors. In the same way the anti-arab or anti-Palestinian stand of some characters, though perfectly true among some Jews is provided to us without any distanciation and without what is essential among Jews : all Jews are not thinking along this line and quite many of them remember their past and refuse to reproduce this past against the Palestinians, even in Israel itself. It is also too easy to reduce, the way the book does, the national struggle of Palestinians to terrorism. But apart from these flaws, the book is interesting because it goes beyond the plain criminal details into the psyche and consciousness of the people at stake, particularly the cops. Cops are definitely not simple-minded people : they do have a culture, an ethical stand and doubts about their involvement in society and the way they have to work to find criminals in a society that is definitely opaque and obscure, a characteristic that enables criminals to hide very easily.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU
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Title: Blow Fly: A Scarpetta Novel by Patricia Cornwell ISBN: 0399150897 Publisher: Putnam Pub Group Pub. Date: 13 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $26.95 |
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Title: The Conspiracy Club by JONATHAN KELLERMAN ISBN: 0345452577 Publisher: Ballantine Books Pub. Date: 25 November, 2003 List Price(USD): $26.95 |
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Title: The Big Bad Wolf: A Novel by James Patterson ISBN: 0316602906 Publisher: Little Brown & Company Pub. Date: 17 November, 2003 List Price(USD): $27.95 |
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Title: A Cold Heart: An Alex Delaware Novel by Jonathan Kellerman ISBN: 0345452550 Publisher: Ballantine Books Pub. Date: 29 April, 2003 List Price(USD): $26.95 |
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Title: Split Second by David Baldacci ISBN: 0446530891 Publisher: Warner Books Pub. Date: 30 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $26.95 |
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