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Title: Stone Kiss by Faye Kellerman ISBN: 0-446-61147-6 Publisher: Warner Books Pub. Date: 30 June, 2003 Format: Mass Market Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.15 (53 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: This sounds familiar
Comment: This book sounds a bit like one of the earlier ones in the series where Peter Decker is searching for a lost family member. Peter's biological brother's brother-in-law (are you following me here?) is killed and his niece is missing. Peter is called from LA to help the family, yet every time he tries, he is rebuffed by them. He and Rina are supposed to go to see his parents in Florida but Peter keeps putting this off to work on the case. (I have a lot more trouble changing airline tickets than Rina seems to.) Besides the plot being somewhat a rehash, there is also the return of Chris Denotti, a psycho killer and sexual predator who needs to disappear from the series but who seems to be set up in this book to return again. Also the relationship between Peter, his adopted brother and his biological brother is revisited, but there are no new insights. The plot is dark and somewhat complex and is not as satisfying as most of the other books in the series. Still, Kellerman fans should probably give this one a chance.
Rating: 2
Summary: A disappointment for Faye Kellerman fans
Comment: I have long been a fan of Faye Kellerman's Peter Decker/Rina Lazarus mysteries, and I looked forward to reading this new one -- but it really disappointed me. Not only is the plot pretty weak (2 not-very-gripping murders solved with very little real detection work), but Kellerman spends far too much time in the sordid world and thoughts of Chris Donatti and his girlfriend Terry, two extremely unappealing characters, and not enough time in the world and thoughts of her detectives. Also, Peter and Rina in this book seem mere shadows of their usual selves, showing little of the deeply felt moral sense that made them so appealing in earlier books. And the writing is sloppy, too -- in three different chapters, Kellerman describes a lake or pond in the rain as looking like "pitted silver", a repetition that she or an editor should have caught. I hope her next book is better -- it's clear from the ending to this one that she plans to bring Donatti back again and keep him in her detectives' lives, but I hope she changes her mind.
Rating: 4
Summary: Long mystery less suspense, more atmosphere
Comment: Faye Kellerman has been writing these stories for about a decade and a half now, since just a few years after her husband started. I think he was first, but I'm not sure. Anyway, her stories have gotten more character and atmosphere-driven, compared with his, because she chose to make her character an Orthodox Jew (both of the Kellermans are, to my understanding, also Orthodox Jews). This gives her something to work with other than the mystery/suspense plot, and serves her well (husband Jonathan has been concentrating on his main character's sidekick, the gay detective Milo Sturgis, in recent books, perhaps because of this). I should explain that the main character, Peter Decker, is an LAPD Homicide cop. He grew up knowing he was adopted, but it wasn't til adulthood that he discovered that his birth mother was Jewish. Coincidentally he met a beautiful woman who was an Orthodox Jew, and wound up converting to that faith and marrying her. This makes for a complicated plot, as Decker has both a birth family (Jewish, and living in New York) and an adoptive family (Gentile, living in Florida). Members of both families appear in the book, and make things complicated.
Decker's birth half-brother calls him in the dead of night to inform him that his (the half-brother's) wife's brother has been murdered in a seedy hotel room in New York City. He was supposedly with his niece (though he shouldn't have been in a hotel room with her, seedy or not). Instead, there are drugs in the room, and no sign of the fifteen year old niece. The brother-in-law asks Decker (in a bit of a stretch) to come to New York City from LA and try and help straighten things out. Decker agrees.
Ultimately, Decker's whole family travels to New York to visit and shop (his wife) and do detective work (Decker). I won't go into any of the details of the plot, other than to tell you that it's interesting, if a bit slow. There are characters from previous books, and various plot devices, that are all fun, in my opinion. I enjoyed reading about the neighborhoods in the city, the Jews (and others) that inhabit them, and so forth. There's much about Orthodox Jews and their thinking and attitudes, and it's fascinating.
I would say that if you want a fast-paced mystery you should probably look elsewhere, though this one does end in an interesting gunfight that concludes rather differently from most. I enjoyed the book, because
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Title: The Murder Book by Jonathan Kellerman ISBN: 0345452534 Publisher: Ballantine Books Pub. Date: 01 October, 2002 List Price(USD): $26.95 |
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Title: The Forgotten by Faye Kellerman ISBN: 0380730847 Publisher: Avon Pub. Date: 02 July, 2002 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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Title: Street Dreams by Faye Kellerman ISBN: 0446531316 Publisher: Warner Books Pub. Date: 05 August, 2003 List Price(USD): $25.95 |
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Title: Stalker: A Peter Decker and Rina Lazarus Novel by Faye Kellerman ISBN: 0380817691 Publisher: Avon Pub. Date: 03 July, 2001 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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Title: Justice: A Peter Decker and Rina Lazarus Mystery by Faye Kellerman ISBN: 0380724987 Publisher: Avon Pub. Date: August, 1996 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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