Customer Reviews

Stone Kiss

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(12)
2 star:		(12)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

L.A. Police Lieutenant Pete Decker gets a call from his half-brother, Rabbi Jonathan Levine. The Levines live in New York and Jonathan is seeking Decker's help. His brother-in-law has been found murdered in a seedy hotel room and his fifteen year-old niece, who he had supposedly been watching that day, had disappeared. Jonathan wants Decker to fly to New York to help the family.

Decker's investigations in New York and Quinton, the town where the victim lived as part of an Orthodox Jewish enclave, are unwelcome to just about everybody, from the police in both cities to the missing girl's parents. And when a hitman from Decker's past enters the picture, things quickly get worse. Brutal but thoughtful, Stone Kiss is well-plotted, fast-moving, well-told and I highly recommend it.

All of the Peter Decker/Rina Lazarus novels by Faye Kellerman are fast reads, and "Stone Kiss" is no exception.

Peter and Rina find themselves in the ultra-orthodox Jewish enclave of Brooklyn, NY, where Peter has been summoned by his half brother, Jonathan, to investigate the murder of Jonathan's brother-in-law, Ephraim Lieber. Peter is reluctant to get involved. He has no police jurisdiction in New York, he is without his usual sources and backup, and the entire Lieber family, grieving for their lost relative--and, coincidentally, Ephraim's teenaged niece, Shayndie, is treating Peter like dirt.

Peter is all for turning right around and going home, but like always, becomes deeply entwined in the mystery, which involves more twists and turns, more mysteries, than anyone shoud have to face. In addition to the missing girl and the murdered uncle, something is very strange about the surviving brother, Chaim, father of the girl--who all but kicks Decker out with his boot while nevertheless garbed in the pious garb of the ultra-orthodox.

It's strange alright--and gets even stranger when the mystery drops Decker right in the lap of mobster Chris Donatti, with whom Decker has a long and complicated history.

The mystery continues almost right up to the last page, and as always, there is no ends-tightly-sewn-together, pat ending. This is a good read, another Faye Kellerman winner, and I highly recommend it.

In this latest book in Faye Kellerman's series featuring Peter and Rina Decker, the couple are called to New York to assist Peter's half-brother, whose brother-in-law has been killed and whose niece is missing. Peter, who is both a veteran cop and a devout Jew, acts as a liaison between the tight-knit Jewish community to which his family belongs and the NYPD. Doing his own investigation, he gets reinvolved with Chris Donatti, a manipulative killer with whom he shares a strange bond.

The mystery in this book is relatively routine, but Kellerman does a good job at making it interesting. And the family drama which often dominates her stories takes a bit of a back seat this time. Instead, the best parts of the story involve the interaction between the Deckers and Donatti.

Except for some rather jarring moments later in the book when she switches to first person point-of-view, this is another good crime story from Kellerman, who has proven to be consistently good over the past few years (although I was not pleased with her non-Decker story, Moon Music). I also have my usual gripe that these stories should not be called "Peter Decker/Rina Lazarus" novels as Rina has had the Decker surname for over a decade in both real and book time; I suppose that is more the publisher than the author, however.

If you're a Faye Kellerman fan, you should enjoy this latest novel. If not, however, this is not the place to start as it refers a lot to older books.

If you describe just the crime and apprehension of the criminals in most novels, and nothing else, you'd see a pattern of sameness that makes most of these stories boring after awhile. Especially the apprehension part. It's frustrating in some good stories, even in the ones where there is good storytelling to see it end in a shootout. So what makes crime novels worth reading (and reviewing) are the worlds created in these stories. That's what I judge this type of book on.

And so it goes with this story. A Los Angeles detective returns to New York after a long absence to investigate the killing of a relative. A twist in this one is that the dead man's teenage niece, the last person to see him alive, is missing. And here is where it gets good.

The family of the murdered man is Jewish, which wouldn't be anything unusual, except that several are very Orthodox. This starts to make it good because the very rigid lives these folks lead, or at least are supposed to lead, provide stark contrast to where the story goes next.

It is here where we are taken into the world of runaway girls, pornography, prostitution, drug dealing, and organized crime. It's a very gritty world without a lot of joy, but I'll only reveal that the protagonists search takes him there. Whether the missing girl is involved in any of this, or to what extent the other Orthodox practitioners are I will leave to you to find out by reading it. Let's just say that all people are well, human, and it's a good thing the God they believe in is a forgiving one.

One of the worst books I've ever read

Uh-oh, looks like I'm in the minority, but the return of Christopher Donatti, to me, is the real spark in this well-written, dark, brodding novel. Oh, yes Chris is definitely sadistic, egocentric, psychopathic, childish, brutal and conscienceless. However, Kellerman has been smart enough to show his "good" side. Maybe he obssesses and uses Terry and others to achieve his own goals, but somewhere in all the brooding good lucks, his buff body, there is a soul of a man abused as a child, reaching out to find someone to love. His cruelty to Decker only masks his intense hate/love relationship. The ending is quite unexpected, and obviously leaves room for Donatti's return.
Elsewhere, Kellerman has fleshed out Jonathan Levine more, and his relationship with Decker grows in admiration and respect. The mystery actually gets overshadowed by the complexity of the relationships and the fiery Donatti. Suffice to say, it's easy to see who the real culprits are...it's just a lot of fun getting there.
ONE OF THE BEST IN THE SERIES.

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.

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

I'm newly hooked on Faye Kellerman and her Peter/Rina series. Unfortunately, this book had far too much transation from Jewish to English in the first several chapters. It seemed redundant and made it laborious to read. I liked the plot and the characters very much and can't wait to read more of her novels.

Peter Decker, detective supremo,from LA meets his match in the big city, New York. Lt. Decker is asked by his brother come lately,Jonathan, an Orthodox Jewish Rabbi, to come to New York to help find the murderer of his brother-in-law. Decker and his wife Rina Lazarus had planned a vacation, but they take this side trip to help family. The plot becomes quite complicated, but easily understood by Faye Kellerman's exquisite writing. She has found a true fan in me with this book. She explains the Orthodox Jewish faith through Rabbi Jonathan and stories of his family. The New York crime family comes to life with the re-introduction of Chris Donatti. Decker saved Donatti's girlfriend in a previvous story and helped her back on her feet. Donatti does not forget this, and even though Decker helps to make his shoddy life much more difficult, he sees Decker through some dangerous times. Lots of gore, mystery and surprises- so well written that I started to think of Rina as a friend that I wanted to warn of the dangers ahead. Decker and Rina extricate themselves and their family from this situation as Decker solves the murder and is looked at as the hero of the day. Off they go to Florida for a fun vacation with family where a letter arrives for Rina and the next mystery is born.