June 18, 2018
The bludgeoning murder of Brady Neil, a 26-year-old electronics store employee, drives bestseller Kellerman’s formulaic 25th novel featuring Peter Decker, a police detective in Greenbury, N.Y., who has spent most of his career in L.A., and his wife, Rina Lazarus (after 2017’s Bone Box). Since the victim lived in the neighboring town of Hamilton, Decker needs to cooperate with the Hamilton police chief, which means his reluctantly accepting the assignment of the chief’s spoiled daughter, Lennie Baccus, to the case. A former Philadelphia PD officer, Lennie used to work for Decker’s detective sergeant daughter in that city—a contrivance that serves no particular purpose. When Decker learns that Neil’s father was doing time for a double homicide, he probes whether the bludgeoning was somehow connected with those murders. Some banter between Decker and Lazarus in praise of Kellerman’s husband and fellow author, Jonathan, and his creation, psychologist Alex Delaware, may strike some readers as too cutesy. Still, series fans will enjoy spending time in the company of old friends.