Burnt House

After a plane crashes in a residential Los Angeles neighborhood, Lieutenant Peter Decker is quick on the scene. As the smoke clears, it seems there is little for him left to do but be thankful that his daughter's nearby school wasn't affected by the crash, and the scene becomes one of search and investigation. But Decker soon receives a phone call. An irate man insists that his stepdaughter, although listed as a casualty, was not on the plane at all. In fact, the caller says, she was murdered by her husband. And so Decker faces the wreckage once more as he tries to find out what really happened to Roseanne Dresden.

In Faye Kellerman's latest effort, earthy Peter Decker is back to solve another crime along with colleagues Marge Dunn and Scott Oliver, and his clever and beautiful wife, Rina Lazarus. Like all past Decker/Lazarus novels, THE BURNT HOUSE combines compelling police work with engaging domestic scenes and adds Kellerman's trademark touch of religious interest. What other literary cop out there is a practicing Orthodox Jew?

Even though Roseanne's family has no evidence to prove foul play, Decker follows up on their hunch. It pays off. It turns out that hers is the only body not recovered from the crash site, and her husband may have had motive to kill her. Decker, Dunn and Oliver begin to investigate in earnest and find that while Roseanne's body is missing, another, unidentified body has turned up. Now they have two murders to investigate. Decker and his team work hard to uncover the truth not only about Dresden but also about the mysterious corpse found in the building the plane crashed into. Their work takes them from Los Angeles to Santa Fe where they meet a family who has been in mourning for 30 years. They track down members of a defunct church and Roseanne's lover, and visit an elderly man in prison. What can all these leads tell them, and what might they have in common?

As always, Kellerman makes a point to illustrate both the uniqueness and normalcy of being an observant Jew in America. Decker negotiating meals, which most people take for granted, is interesting; it is easier for him to say he is a vegetarian than to say he keeps kosher. Rina's religious ideas and spirituality are thought provoking, giving the reader --- through her conversations with her husband and others --- new ways to think about guilt, innocence, sin and the importance of family.

THE BURNT HOUSE is a great read with the right number of twists and turns and the always reliable character of Peter Decker. Some coincidences may be a bit of a stretch, and there is less Rina Lazarus than some fans might want. But Kellerman's pace and dialogue are as good as ever. This is a recommendable novel to transition readers from light summer reads to darker, more thoughtful winter tomes.

--- Reviewed by Sarah Rachel Egelman

One ridiculous coincidence is bad. Two are way too much to accept. Not only was the whole plane crash into a very specific location bad, but then bones hidden for 30 years suddenly get found at the exact right time. And unless I missed it, nobody -- not one single detective, airline employee, reporter -- nobody thought about checking any security camera footage to see if the supposed victim was at the airport and boarded the flight? The book was published in 2007. Assuming it was written anytime in the 15 years prior, cameras are everywhere in and around airports. This was a very disappointing book.

Excitement, suspense and good police work is always found in Rina and Peter books. This one is no different. A plane crashes into a apartment Dector's district. There is no record of Rosanne Dresden of boarding the plane though she is list as kill in the crash. As the recovery continues Roseanne is not found. Everyone is excited when a woman's body is found. It was first assumed to Roseanne. However it is not. We have unknown victim and 2 murder cases to solve. The twist and turns are great and keep.you entrance.

This book will delight those who like mysteries that are very difficult to solve before the author reveals the story's resolution.

If you mainly read the Peter Decker/Rina Lazarus books to focus on their life together, you'll think this is one of the worst books in the series. If you like puzzles, however, you'll feel fully rewarded by the challenging of determining what happened to flight attendant, Roseanne Dresden. Along the way, you'll pick up some unexpected twists that also make for good mystery reading.

This plot relies on a lot of coincidences. That can be troubling for a reader to swallow, but in real life coincidence occurs so often that we often don't even bother to remark on it. There is a subgenre of police procedural that relies on having more than one case mixed up in an investigation. I thought that the premise for this mystery was stronger than most books in that subgenre. But what distinguished the book was that the resolutions proved to be so difficult to anticipate. I dislike mysteries where you can see the solution beginning to take shape around page 50. In this case, Ms. Kellerman did an excellent job of keeping the resolution hidden until very near the end.

From reading this book, I hope that Ms. Kellerman will write more books that contain difficult puzzles whose solutions only gradually reveal themselves through police investigations.

Bravo, Ms. Kellerman!

I really enjoyed this story which is almost two stories in one. A plane crashes just after take-off, into an apartment building, incinerating everybody on the plane and in the building. A question arises about whether or not an off-duty stewardess was aboard as an unlisted passenger which is what is claimed by her husband. There's a discrepancy about all of this and so Detective Peter Decker and his team are called in to investigate. The husband of the missing stewardess would have been made penniless by his impending divorce and, by swearing that he knew that she was aboard, benefits greatly from her will and insurance. When the team finds another body in the burned out building, the trail goes back 30 years and another murder mystery is uncovered. It's an exciting, fast paced read with lots of interesting detail and even descriptions of Jewish and Mexican food and rituals.

This is the first Peter Decker/Rina Lazarus book that I've read. According to the other reviews this is not the best in the series and I can see why. The bizarre coincidence that links the crimes is never questioned by the investigators. In some of the investigating there is too much detail, in other parts there's not enough. Some things are not explained at all such as when and how the unexpected body got into the building. These 2 stories could have been separate books, there is no reason to link them which turns out to be an artificial device and stretches the readers ability to suspend disbelief.

I was so looking forward to reading this book! I'm a huge fan of the whole Peter Decker/Rina Lazarus series of books, but this was one huge disappointment, from start to finish.

The book starts out on a high note, fast paced, exciting, with a plane crash in a densely populated neighborhood in suburban Los Angeles, but the characters are linked by a series of improbable coincidences that only become more ridiculous as the story unfolds. These kinds of plot potholes are so unlike Faye Kellerman that one has to wonder if she wasn't comatose when she penned these words to paper. Peter Decker and his LAPD associates spend way too much time and taxpayer expense flying to different locales to interview witnesses, endless hours following up slim threads of leads. For anyone even remotely familiar with police procedure, these details will ring entirely false. Didn't Peter Decker ever hear of something called a telephone? A minor quibble, perhaps, but it is just one example of the lack of quality that is found in the pages of this novel especially when compared to the high quality of Faye Kellerman's earlier books.

There really should be a way to give something "negative" stars.

Short review: If you know or care about good writing, avoid this book, because it will make you shudder and cringe all the way through. The only thing I can recall that was more badly written is "Twilight."

Long version:

It is not often that a book manages to irritate me repeatedly within the first two pages, so I suppose a book that does could be considered "extraordinary." By that criterion, "The Burnt House" by Faye Kellerman is extraordinary.

The irritation begins in the first paragraph with a missing antecedent. "Sixty-seven seconds later, with its nose still headed skyward, it inexplicably yawed to the left . . . ." To what does "it" refer? The preceding sentence has three subjects: the skies, the wind, and "the heavens' visibility," none of which is likely to yaw to the left while its nose is headed skyward. We are left to assume that "it" must refer to the plane.

Later in the same sentence, Kellerman states that after clipping a power line, the plane "thundered its last hurrah." A "last hurrah" is a final performance or appearance at the end of a career, a triumphant farewell. A crashing plane is hardly making a triumphant farewell; it is simply . . . crashing. The only thing worse than using a cliché is using the wrong cliché.

So much for the first paragraph. Yes, I said "first paragraph."

In the next paragraph, Kellerman states that the plane's fuselage landed on an apartment house, and later, in the same sentence, refers to the building as a "residential structure." I suppose just saying "the building" would have been too simple?

Farther down, Kellerman says, "The stench of fire, smoke, and fuel oil that infused the air was toxic and suffocating." There are three things wrong with this sentence. First, where did the fuel oil come from and what is it doing there? There is no mention of oil furnaces or other oil-burning equipment. Second, there are many stenches that smell bad enough to be toxic, but a stench, by itself, is not toxic. Finally, there's "infused." "Infuse" generally refers to a liquid. It would have been better simply to say, "filled the air."

A sentence or two later, Kellerman says, "Oxygen was choked out of the atmosphere," which conjures up a picture of a pair of giant hands grabbing the air by the throat and strangling it.

Kellerman finishes off her prologue thus: "Within a heartbeat of time, a green suburban landscape had been transformed into an unimaginable holocaust of hell." Now, as far a I know, "a heartbeat" usually is used as a measure of time. I do not recall ever seeing it used as a measurement of anything else-- say, a heartbeat of bourbon or a heartbeat of anxiety or a heartbeat of Tabasco sauce.

As for "unimaginable holocaust of hell," that's so bad it's almost good. To call the scene "unimaginable" after spending two paragraphs not only imagining it, but describing it, is absurd. Since "holocaust" refers to something completely destroyed by fire, and "hell" burns forever without being destroyed, a "holocaust of hell" is an impossibility.

Thirty-seven hours after the crash, Kellerman says, the fire was still "far from out" and "Jet fuel was still stoking the flames." Kellerman, it appears, does not realize that jet fuel burns QUICKLY, which is precisely why it's used in jets. The only way there could still be jet fuel around thirty-seven hours after the crash is if additional jet fuel were being dumped on or pumped into the area.

Kellerman's dialogue is just as bad as her narrative. Peter Decker tells his wife that he would "love" to see her parents. Surprised, she says, "You would?"

He replies, "After witnessing such harrowing events, I look forward to a night with the in-laws and their mundane problems. Besides, your mother is a phenomenal cook."

Nobody talks like that-- NOBODY. I'll spare you further examples. Suffice it to say that Kellerman has never actually heard real people talking-- or if she did, she didn't pay much attention.

Kellerman also takes time out to give us blow-by-blow accounts of events and conversations that have nothing to do with the story. In one such irksome interlude, Kellerman recounts the conversation between Marge (one of the detectives) and her adopted daughter Vega, who is all in a dither because she has been invited to a party. Vega, we are told, was raised in a strict religious cult and is "socially blunted." For nearly four pages, we are treated to Marge's motherly advice; for instance: "Sweetheart, just be your own sweet self. Talk about the weather, talk about politics, talk about your work.

Well, now, THAT is guaranteed to make the girl the life of the party, isn't it?

What does this have to do with the story? Nothing. Why is it there? I have no idea. It takes up nearly four pages that should either have been omitted or used to move the story along.

Curiously, Kellerman refers to women by their first names and men by their last names. Thus, Marge Dunn is "Marge," but her fellow detective, Scott Oliver, is not "Scott" but "Oliver." Likewise, Rina Decker is "Rina," but her husband Peter is "Decker." What is the purpose of this sexist nomenclature? And it IS sexist, since it is done arbitrarily by sex: men get the last name, women get the first name.

Like her husband Jonathan, Kellerman has the annoying habit of describing people's clothing, even when it is utterly irrelevant, which is most of the time. Worse, she tries to be "clever" about it. After describing a woman's other clothing, Kellerman says, "Her hair was pinned back into a ponytail and her feet were housed in flip-flops." Aside from the passive voice, which is always annoying, that word "housed" is irksome. Shoes are not houses, and the word is especially absurd used in connection with flip-flops. Apparently Kellerman thinks that describing feet as "housed" in this or that kind of footwear is terribly clever, because she does it several more times throughout the book.

What about the story itself? I suppose there is one, but when a book is so badly written that I can't read a single page without running into several literary blunders, I cease to care about the story.

I have enjoyed the Rina Lazarus/Peter Decker stories from the beginning, but it seems that the quality of the recent stories have significantly deteriorated. This one is based on a set of coincidences that are simply not believable. I read the book through to its conclusion, hoping and expecting a more credible solution to the story's central mysteries, but it was not to be. I also would ask that if there are more Rina/Peter stories, that more focus is put back on their relationship. That also seemed to be missing in this story, although as I write these words, it occurs to me that perhaps the author has taken that piece of things asfar as it can go.

I was pleasantly surprised by the latest Fay Kellerman book. I had not enjoyed her foray into a different story with different characters and did not enjoy her last several Peter Decker and Rina Lazarus books.

However, this book is different from recent F. Kellerman novels. Maybe Ms. Kellerman needed a break from this series to come back with this more powerful book.

I like the fact that the characters age in the novel, so the Decker--Lazarus daughter is now a young teen. For those like me who enjoy it, this book has more Jewish content than some of the more recent ones in the series. And, finally, the plot holds together quite well.

I disagree with two other reviewers. Unfortunately, the plot IS plausable. It is amazing that we have had so very few planes crash into residential areas in the US.

I definitely recommend reading the book.

This was my first experience reading a Faye Kellerman novel. I found The Burnt House an enjoyable read, good story, plausible characters,good writing,but the plot was a little anticlimactic at the end. Also, I figured out the killers early on. It's a sound police procedural though and Ms. Kellerman's love and knowledge of California and Santa Fe, New Mexico come through in spades.
It makes me want to check out some of her other novels.

James A Anderson, Author
DEADLINE

If you like a mystery that involves every detail about a police investigation of a murder, then this book is for you. Most of the book gave minute details about the investigation so, to me, it lingered on that information for too long. It was a simple read, not a challenging mystery to solve.

My theory is Faye Kellerman did not really write this. She wrote down some basic ideas and had someone else do it. Rina was a different character this time, and so was Marge. Someone was trying to do it but did not have the same grasp of the characters as Faye Kellerman. Rina was a very poor caricature of her former self. The whole book did not have the well-woven family-spirituality-philosophy-crime-drama as the others in the series have so beautifully.
I am a big fan of the series. This one was written by someone else.

I had high hopes for Faye Kellerman's latest publication but the promise far exceeded the reality. Tighter editing of unnecessary and endless discussions of food, the sweating habits of large men and the impact of tampax failure on luminol results would have gone a long way. The plot was somewhat plausible but never really came together in a meaningful way. Rina and Peter have more to offer than this book gave them credit for.

Burnt House was my second attempt at reading Faye Kellerman. I'm a HUGE fan of Faye Kellerman's husband, Jonathan Kellerman but haven't been able to get into her novels.

My biggest problem with Burnt House is the fact that Decker doesn't believe in coincidences. However, TWO cases have intersected in a very big way and unless I missed something, it was never addressed or acknowledged. I also felt that the storyline got bogged down by a lot of seemingly unnecessary details.

I am constantly amazed at the disconnect between book cover blurbs and the contents of the books they are alleged to describe. This one is more over-the-top than most: "...the unidentified bodies of four extra travelers." Nope. No extra travelers, or their bodies. No "...mind-searing portrait of unimaginable evil ...". Just a middling good police procedural, with familiar characters, welcomed back as old friends. Worth the read for that, mind you, if you like Decker and Lazarus, but it's not one of the better stories in the series.

As others have stated, the plot wouldn't happen in a zillion years. And I wonder if the author just got tired at the end. The person who killed a certain party never explained how the body was disposed of or how and where the murder occurred. It was covered in a sentence or two, leaving me wondering. Did I sleep thru something?

Since flight attendant Rosanne Dresden's remains were not in the wreckage from the communter plane which crashed into an apartment house in Granada Hills, CA, where is she? That is Homicide Detective Peter Decker's problem to figure out in this great addition to this series. Her husband and lover both look suspicious, but what is their motive? Finally, when a female's body is found in the ashes, Decker has to identify her and discovers another mystery--only this one is 30 years old. This is a great police procedural that kept me reading into the night. This series about Peter Decker just keeps getting better.

This latest Faye Kellerman book was just okay. Editing, however was terrible. As others have said, the cover "blurb" bears no resemblence to story and far too many pages were spent on endless details which added almost nothing to the enjoyment of the story.

Even more annoying were simple spelling/grammar errors which should have be corrected during editing: "sight" was used twice for "site" and Tampax was spelled incorrectly. Pretty amateurish for a seasoned writer and major publisher.

The coincidences in the plot were not really believable and the resources/expenses spent on a cold case seemed excessive.

Overall, an okay read but certainly not her best book

I usually enjoy Faye Kellerman's books and have always been a fan. This one is a tough read. I had a hard time finishing it. Is it just me, or does Decker seem to get more sanctimoneous with each book? The holier than thou attitude gets scary in a character who is in law enforcement. The plot is not plausible at all and it was hard to have any sympathy for the main character because he is so judgemental of others.

I agree with other reviewers who found the plot convoluted and unrealistic. I won't repeat those details.
A big peeve I had was that at the end, Rina ate non-kosher food in New Mexico. For an Orthodox Jew, that's a big deal and totally out of character for Rina.

I keep thinking lately everytime I read books in this series that she gives an amazing builup to the story,developes her characters beautifully but rushed the ending in the last 10 pages..I left feeling..so thats it?But this whole series is addictive because you get caught up in the characters family life. Pete and Rina feel like they could be my neighbors!The only drawback if someone wants to start reading from the series they almost have to start from the begining to know the characters or else you could be left thinking...now who is that now...Overall its a good book but it isnt as good as some of her others..

This is only the second Faye Kellerman book I have read. The first was The Ritual Bath many years ago. Therefore, I was not saddled by expectations. I thought the book had a good balance between family life and good detective work. There were two disparate murders to investigate, so the plot kept moving.

During the morning rush hours, a commuter plane leaving Burbank Airport crashes into a Granada Hills apartment building; all forty-seven passengers die. The country is stunned with most people assuming the World Trade center scenario on a smaller scale.

LAPD Police Lieutenant Peter Decker leads the investigation while the media and public demand instant answers. He and his wife Rina Lazarus dig deep to determine who and what caused the crash; why more corpses are in the rubble than on the passenger list; and finally what happened to flight attendant twenty-eight-year-old Roseanne Dresden, whose husband Ivan says she was on the tragic flight and her name is on the manifesto, but her body is not.

The latest Decker-Lazarus police procedural is an exhilarating fast-paced thriller that starts off with the horrific crash and never slows down until the final twists. The action keeps coming throughout as the lead couple struggles with all three interrelated mysteries while the country fears further incidents; the media and the government keep the pressure high to resolve the case. Although plausibility and critical coincidence is higher than the federal debt, fans of the series will enjoy the return of the pair as they work a complex convoluted case.

Harriet Klausner

I'm a faithful, longtime fan of Faye Kellerman. I enjoy her writing immensely, and I've followed Peter & Rina's saga since the beginning. I was very disappointed, however, by "Burnt House." Yes, the writing remains sharp and engaging, but the plot is ludicrous. Briefly -- a flight attendant is believed to have perished in an airplane crash; there's no trace of her body, but the remains of another, unidentified woman are found; the two women's lives converge in an absurdly implausable way. What should have been an excellent novel instead leaves the reader feeling cheated.

I've read all the previous Decker/Lazarus novels and to say that this one is a disappointment is a true understatement. The writing in particular is disapointing: unsophisticated, almost juvenile in comparison to earlier volumes. I keep asking myself which one of the younger Kellermans actually wrote this book. And for heaven's sake, where was the editor?

As a long-time reader of the Decker-Lazarus series, I have been disappointed by a steady decline into weaker plots and characterizations and more pages wasted on gratuitous sex, violence, and other mishegos. This book feels like a turnaround. The characterizations feel rich, the reader's time is respected, and it is a true whodunit almost to the last chapter.

This mystery starts out with great promise but doesn't deliver. The plot is murky and dependent on coincidences. I had to keep rereading to figure out what the heck was going on. Lots of loose ends, too.

I keep coming back for a glimpse of these characters and what they used to bring to Kellerman novels. The series continues to disappoint. Ridiculous and contrived plot aside, laughably stilted writing aside, is it really too much to ask for a basic editing--perhaps even a simple run-through by any real cop or lawyer? For example, are readers not entitled to the respect of not having Pete Decker, a character purported to have decades of experience in law enforcement, spout such silly mistakes as (p. 388) that a wife is not "required to expose any crimes that [her] husband may have done and confided" as a matter of......"the Fifth Amendment"? Please. Just about anyone who's ever even watched an episode of Law & Order could have explained to Ms. Kellerman the evidentiary concept of marital privilege/disqualification, and that it has nothing to do with the Fifth Amendment.

I've given up on expecting great writing and insightful character development. I've now given up on thinking that the author is even interested in giving the barest attention to her writing. Please do not waste any more time on this series.

I thought I would purchase a Faye Kellerman book, based only on the fact that I enjoy Jonathan Kellerson so much. Never again. Dialogue is ridiculous, stilted, and unreal. Nobody would ever say the things that her characters say. If she is going for only comedy, maybe this would be o.k., but I assume she's trying to be serious. Overuse of names (first and last) - far too many names intefering with the story. I had to skim the last half of the book just to see how it ended...didn't feel like wasting my time. Never again.

I found this book disappointing. Had I not had a feel from Faye Kellerman's earlier novels for the characters, I would have ranked it even lower. I missed Rina's insights especially about religion and the story lacked suspense or excitement. Had I known how disappointing it would be, I would have skipped reading this mystery.

I found this book disappointing. Had I not had a feel from Faye Kellerman's earlier novels for the characters, I would have ranked it even lower. I missed Rina's insights especially about religion and the story lacked suspense or excitement. Had I known how disappointing it would be, I would have skipped reading this mystery.