telynor's Full Review: Faye Kellerman - The Burnt House
I started to read Faye Kellerman's Peter Decker/Rina Lazarus series back in the 1980's when they were just starting to be published. But after the sixth or so novel, the stories started to flag a bit, with the characters turning a bit stale, and the stories becoming far too similar to one another. Eventually, I just let them go, figuring that it was becoming more effort than I wanted to spend in trying to keep up with them.
With The Burnt House, Faye Kellerman gives a good thriller with quite a twist or two. Peter Decker is still a lieutenant with the LAPD, with only one child, Hannah, and Rina at home, with the other three children out making their own lives and futures. Life is getting to be pretty good, and he's looking forward to the day he can retire. But an early morning is shattered by a horrendous explosion as a commuter jet crashes just after takeoff and demolishes an apartment building.
When the carnage is finally cleared, Peter Decker starts to get some very annoying phone calls. Among the dead is a flight attendant with WestAir, but so far, none of the remains match that of Roseanne Dresden. Her father is calling Decker regularly to vent his spleen, saying that his no-good-son-in-law, Ivan (the Terrible) Dresden has taken the crash as a good cover to murder Roseanne. If Roseanne was indeed on the plane, then where is her body?
Decker returns to the crash site, and this time, a body is found. But there's a problem, and a serious one -- the remains have been in the ground for a long long time before the WestAir crash. Most of the novel is taken up with discovering who this unknown woman is, a lot of traveling between Santa Fe, New Mexico, San Jose, and Los Angeles. Along the way, there's some interesting bits on modern forensics, southwestern cookery, the influence of cults, and fading folk singers. It's an interesting blend to say the least. I found the sequence where the team is trying to identify someone using facial reconstruction from a skull to be very interesting to read about, and yes, that technology is in place today.
Mixed in with the criminal story is Kellerman's unique addition to the mystery genre. As with all of her novels, she always puts in some of Decker's home life, trying to be an Orthodox Jew in a very modern world, with all of the culture shock that comes along with it. While the character of his wife, Rina Lazarus, has become more or less in the background and not nearly as prominent as she was in the earlier novels, she does give a good balance and at times, good common sense, to the story. We also get a bit of an update on Decker's daughter, Cindy, now a police officer and with a young doctor named Koby. Hannah is a teenager, with all of the angst that goes along with it, and unfortunately, there isn't much about Sam and Jacob, Decker's two stepsons.
On the downside to all of this, most of the story is predictable -- we know that the bad guys are going to be getting justice meted out to them, the question is how do we get there? One of the better parts about Kellerman's writing is that she has an excellent touch with dialog, able to let the reader into not just how the villains think, but also the detectives as they solve their cases. And she is smart enough to know that not everyone is absolutely good or evil, a touch that I appreciate as a reader.
In the paperbound edition, there is an excerpt from Faye Kellerman's next novel, The Mercedes Corpse, published in 2008.
Overall, I give this one about four stars. It's better than most police procedural novels, and the surprise twist at the end is a doozy, and a bit unexpected. Recommended.
The Burnt House
Faye Kellerman
2007; William Morrow/HarperCollins Publishing
ISBN 978-0-06-122736-3
At 8 15 in the morning, a small commuter plane carrying forty-seven passengers crashes into an apartment building in Granada Hills, California. Shock ...More at Barnes & Noble.com
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