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Posts Tagged ‘faye kellerman’

Reviewed by Julie Moderson

Faye Kellerman is one of my favorite authors and Gun Games is such an amazing book. It is definitely a must read book. Just a warning, you will stay up all night to finish it.

The story starts with 15-year-old Gabe Whitman sitting in a coffee shop minding his own business when a group of kids come into Starbucks looking for trouble. One of the boys tells Gabe that he is going to sit his seat and he better move now and then he shows Gabe the gun tucked in his waist band. Gabe handles it with such finesse and turns to try to be friendly with the thug. In doing so he disarms him mentally. Gabe is a very talented pianist and is home schooled so he doesn’t know whom these kids are. He is living with his father’s friend detective Peter Decker and his wife Rina Lazarus. Children in the school that these thugs attend are committing suicide and no one can understand why. It takes a while to connect the dots and figure out what is really happening. Read the rest of this entry »

Reviewed by Caryn St. Clair

With long running series, it’s sometimes hard to age the main characters and their families. Readers become attached, not only the main characters, but also the supporting cast around them. The same can be said about running themes in books. In most of Kellerman’s books featuring Decker and Lazarus, there has been a strong emphasis on their families and Rina’s strong Orthodox Jewish faith. Neither really plays a part in Gun Games. The assorted Decker and Lazarus children are grown and off doing other things, no extended family is involved and Rina’s faith does not come into play much at all. This will undoubtedly disappoint some readers. Both Peter Decker and his wife Rina Lazarus are back, as is their foster son Gabriel Whitman. This book is Gabriel’s-and possibly Kellerman’s effort to shift the series in a different direction.

Gabriel witnessed a fellow student commit suicide which given his rocky background is enough to concern the Decker household. But when the student’s mother approaches Peter saying she is sure her son’s death was not suicide and asks him to investigate, Peter agrees. It also causes Peter and Rina to wonder what Gabriel is not telling them. Things become even more intense when a second child, from the same elite school dies-also of an apparent suicide. Decker launches an all out full scale investigation. Read the rest of this entry »

Reviewed by Caryn St. Clair

In any police officer’s career there are a few cases or people who stick with the officer through the years. It may be an unsolved case. It may be a heart wrenching victim. It may be an innocent man convicted. In Hangman, Kellerman uses the last scenario to set up one of the plot threads. Years ago, a friend of Peter’s confessed to a crime he didn’t commit the save someone else the ordeal of a trial. Eventually the truth came out and he was released from prison, got married, changed his name and became a hired killer. Peter has maintained contact with his wife over the years and now, she turns to Peter for help. The other plot thread follows a well liked nurse who goes missing only to be found hanging from at construction site. As it turns out, the nurse had a second life-a life on the wild side that few of her colleagues knew about.

This book takes a long time to set up and get moving. There is really not a lot of action until well past the mid point of the book and even then there are long passages of dialogue that do nothing to move the plot forward. This series isn’t read as thrillers anyway, so the slower pacing might well be fine for readers who are primarily interested in the procedural angle to the series. But for people who want more of a moving storyline or are primarily interested in Rina, the family drama and the inclusion of the Jewish Orthodox religion elements of the series, there is bound to be some disappointment. Rina is trying to plan a sixtieth birthday celebration for Peter and Hannah is preparing to leave for Israel to study, but overall, Rina, the family and the religion play a fairly minor role throughout Hangman. Read the rest of this entry »

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Detective Lieutenant Peter Decker, LAPD Homicide, and his wife Rina Lazarus are awakened to a late night call. As Rina hands him the phone, knowing that this is going to bad for the force to call “The Loo” during the night. And she was right.

Not only does he come upon a gruesome multiple homicide but it’s of a very well known, high profile and extremely wealthy family. The CEO and real estate tycoon, Guy Kaffey, his wife, Gilliam, and one of his son’s, Gil, are shot during what appears to be a robbery as they sat in the massive home’s living room. Bodyguards and staff have also been killed. But Gil, one son, is critically injured but has survived and gives the police a few things that he remembers from those awful seconds. But how could this have happened with so many types of security in place?

Could this be an inside job? Guy has very strong family bonds and believes in giving some a second chance. Was that his downfall? Mace, his brother, and other son Grant, travel immediately to LA from the East Coast, where they oversee the family’s holdings there. Read the rest of this entry »