Faye Kellerman has been hitting the Botox
Or so I surmise from the author photo on her latest release, The Mercedes Coffin. She's also gone a couple shades lighter with her hair color, which is working for her. The Botox, not so much. Actually Jonathan Kellerman was looking pretty Botoxed himself in his most recent jacket photo, if memory serves. It's so nice when a husband and wife share a common interest.
Snarking aside, I've been a fan of Faye Kellerman for years -- starting with The Ritual Bath and reading everything she's written since. The Peter Decker books are the best, of course, and this is one of them. It's kind of fun, in a surreal way, to read about Decker's younger daughter, now in high school, and remember when her parents met. I suppose it's like the relationship some people have with soap opera characters.
The book is . . . okay. The premise is that a female Bill Gates type offers the LAPD a bazillion dollars in grant money if they reopen and solve a fifteen-year old case -- the murder of her high school guidance counselor. She's reminded of the case by a story in the paper about a more recent murder, of a former punk rock musician turned record producer, that shares some striking features with the murder of the guidance counselor. Decker is assigned to the cold case, and of course he ends up solving both crimes. We knew that. Along the way, we get lots of descriptions of Rina's cooking, Shabbos dinner at the Deckers' with Cindy and her husband, Faye Kellerman's lame attempt to depict an 80s punk band, and lots of tidbits for the long-time reader. Petra Conner, the detective in Jonathan Kellerman's Billy Straight, has an off-screen cameo. Decker calls Chris Donatti, the villain of another book (I can't remember which one), for information. There's a reference to Rina owning a painting that sold for a lot of money -- you have to have read Kellerman's short story collection, Garden of Eden, to know the back story to that one. And that pretty much sums up the book -- it's strictly for the die-hard fan. Kellerman is kind of phoning it in this time around.
Snarking aside, I've been a fan of Faye Kellerman for years -- starting with The Ritual Bath and reading everything she's written since. The Peter Decker books are the best, of course, and this is one of them. It's kind of fun, in a surreal way, to read about Decker's younger daughter, now in high school, and remember when her parents met. I suppose it's like the relationship some people have with soap opera characters.
The book is . . . okay. The premise is that a female Bill Gates type offers the LAPD a bazillion dollars in grant money if they reopen and solve a fifteen-year old case -- the murder of her high school guidance counselor. She's reminded of the case by a story in the paper about a more recent murder, of a former punk rock musician turned record producer, that shares some striking features with the murder of the guidance counselor. Decker is assigned to the cold case, and of course he ends up solving both crimes. We knew that. Along the way, we get lots of descriptions of Rina's cooking, Shabbos dinner at the Deckers' with Cindy and her husband, Faye Kellerman's lame attempt to depict an 80s punk band, and lots of tidbits for the long-time reader. Petra Conner, the detective in Jonathan Kellerman's Billy Straight, has an off-screen cameo. Decker calls Chris Donatti, the villain of another book (I can't remember which one), for information. There's a reference to Rina owning a painting that sold for a lot of money -- you have to have read Kellerman's short story collection, Garden of Eden, to know the back story to that one. And that pretty much sums up the book -- it's strictly for the die-hard fan. Kellerman is kind of phoning it in this time around.