The Burnt House [Kindle Edition]

Although not one of the best thrillers that Faye Kellerman has written, this was, nonetheless an enjoyable read. After a break of about two years (her last book was more historical) it was lovely to be involved in the Rina/Pete Decker extended family - including his Police colleagues. Mind you, time has passed! Hannah is no longer the sweet little girl that she was - she ha grown to be one of those dreaded creatures ... a teenager!

The story was gripping too. A terrifying plane crash over L.A. - followed by a missing body results in a deep mystery - especially once a body totally unrelated to the case turns up!
Problem 1 - whose is the body?
Problem 2 - who murdered her?
Problem 3 - where is the stewardess? Is she dead, and if so, who murdered her?

Pete travels all over the area, clocking up the airmiles and spending many sleepless nights; ending up with an intriguing and unexpected solution.

If you are at a loose end and are looking for a light, enjoyable read; give it a go. It's a good, light read.

Faye Kellerman is the wife of the author Jonathan Kellerman, and while they both write detective fiction, their writing styles are typically very different. His books tend to rattle along at a certain rate, while her books are typically more thought provoking. Both styles are valid, but I find her books more enjoyable when they're written well.

In this book, a plane crashes into an appartment block in Los Angeles. The actual crash is dealt with quickly, because the aftermath is at the heart of the book.

While looking for evidence of the last remaining passenger from the crash (a passenger they never find), they come across a badly burned body. Naturally they assume their work is done. When this assumption turns out to be false, Pete Decker decides he has two murders on his hands, one recent (the passenger), and one over 30 years old.

After some decent detective work, they nail both killers, and that element of the story is told well. The problem is that the book focuses a little too much of the mystery aspect of the story. The best Faye Kellerman stories make me think (or tell me something about Judaism, if nothing else), and that doesn't happen here, which left me wanting more from the book, and that's a shame.

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!