The Burnt House

Solid police procedural as Decker and his team work to identify a body found in an apartment building destroyed in a cataclysmic plane crash. Some confusion between the corpse and a missing flight attendant needs to get sorted out with the realization that they are investigating two murders. The cast of supporting characters stays interesting with the focus this time on the police rather than the family.

A disappointment. I've always enjoyed spending time with the Deckers--Kellerman usually provides a nice balance between the police procedural aspects of her story and the personal lives of her characters. Neither element works well in this one. An old crime and a new one are both brought to light by a plane crash, and the coincidence that joins them together is just too much. Peter Decker spends most of the book getting on and off airplanes, or trying to calm irate relatives who think they are either being brushed off or harrassed by the police. He's exhausted, and the reader is tired of it. Plot developments seem to happen where the reader is not, later being revealed by one character filling in another on recent findings of the show more investigation.
On the personal level, the interaction between Peter and Rina is perfunctory, and while I have always respected Rina's faith and commitment to religious observance, in this book she comes across as just plain preachy. Finally, as I often notice in series fiction such as this, The Burnt House shows almost no evidence of editing. I think certain authors become "untouchable" at about the same time they may be getting too comfortable with their recurring characters, which leads to a muddled over-long novel like this one. show less

Wife of the best-selling Jonathan Kellerman, and mother of the aspirant Jesse Kellerman, Faye Kellerman has hacked out her own niche in the fictional hall of fame with Lieutenant Pete Decker of the LAPD, and his wife Rina Lazarus.

When a passenger plane collides with a block of flats, killing everyone on board, there are fears that it was an act of terrorism: among the corpses, one passenger is unaccounted for, yet there is an unidentified body.

Solid police procedural work, twists, suspense and a fascinating insight into the lives and customs of modern American orthodox Jews make this a fast pace and enjoyable read – despite the plot turning on an implausible co-incidence.

I actually think this book is more like a 3.5, but I give it a 4 because of good writing. The good writing, not the plot, is what kept me engaged.

A small commuter plane crashes into an apartment building. Everyone aboard is killed. As authorities comb the wreckage to recover bodies, the body of a flight attendant comes up missing. Peter Decker is on the case, investigating the missing flight attendant. Then authorities find a body that has nothing to do with the crash and that looks like it had been under the apartment building for decades.

As Decker investigates both of these cases, his team is sent back and forth from Los Angeles to San Jose to New Mexico as they slowly gather enough details to solve both mysteries.

The story was good show more but not so engaging that I couldn't put the book down. Faye Kellerman is an excellent writer, and her writing is what elevated this novel despite the lack of character depth. It's possible that the character depth was lacking because it had already been dealt with in previous Decker/Lazarus novels, but it seemed noticeably shallow in this book.

Regardless, I did enjoy this book, just not as much as I usually enjoy Kellerman's books. show less

It all begins with the crash of a small commuter plane out of Burbank (Bob Hope) airport early one morning and the supposed death of an airline steward. When all the victims are accounted for, her body is not identified, although the remains of bones beneath the destroyed structure into which the plane plunged are discovered. Thus begins the hunt for the truth behind the disappearance of two women. The skeleton is finally identified as someone gone missing thirty years before. The stewardess' body remains the subject of a continued search. Is the husband somehow responsible for her disappearance or even her possible murder?

I've read Faye Kellerman's Peter Decker series for years. It is without a doubt one of my favorites. This will not show more disappoint fans of the series or any newbie's starting to read it. show less

Nicely written. Good character development. Sometimes the double story got a bit confusing.

When a man comes to police detective Peter Decker and tells him that his daughter Roseanne didn't die in the recent plane crash but thinks the husband killed her, Peter agrees to check into it. He and his detectives find that the body wasn't found among the crash ruins and the husband was seeing other women but that Roseanne has recently had an affair too. When another body from the crash is recovered and it's not Roseanne, things get complicated.

This was an easy to read police procedural with likable characters, a bit of humor, and several suspects that kept things interesting. The ending wrapped up a bit quickly but overall, I liked it.