Hangman (Peter Decker and Rina Lazarus Series #19)

by Faye Kellerman

Overview

Fifteen years ago, Chris Whitman went to jail for murdering his girlfriend. Propelled by a misguided sense of chivalry, he confessed. When the truth came out, Chris was released from prison, got married and changed his last name to Donatti. He also became a professional killer.

Peter Decker was the detective on the case, and over the years he and Donatti have kept in touch. But things become complicated when Terry, Donatti's wife, goes missing and Donatti himself disappears, leaving their 14-year-old son, Gabe, with no one to turn to except Peter and his wife, Rina Lazarus.

But Peter's search for Terry must share center stage with a gruesome murder. Was this unusually cruel and very dramatic murder the first signs of a serial killer? With lives hanging in the balance, Decker and his colleagues, Sergeant Marge Dunn and Detective Scott Oliver, need to find answers and fast.

As if juggling two investigations weren't enough for the lieutenant, things are becoming even more dangerous with his ­precarious home life. Peter wants to look after Terry's son. Yet who will protect his own family? Because if there's one thing he knows for sure, with a sociopath like Donatti on the loose, no one is ever really safe.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780061702617
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	04/26/2011
Series:	Peter Decker and Rina Lazarus Series , #19
Pages:	448
Sales rank:	101,590
Product dimensions:	4.10(w) x 6.60(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

Faye Kellerman is the author of twenty-seven novels, including twenty New York Times bestselling mysteries that feature the husband-and-wife team of Peter Decker and Rina Lazarus. She has also penned two bestselling short novels with her husband, New York Times bestselling author Jonathan Kellerman, and recently teamed up with her daughter Aliza to cowrite a young adult novel, Prism—the story of four teens in an alternate universe. She lives with her husband in Los Angeles, California, and Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Hometown:

Beverly Hills, California

Date of Birth:

July 31, 1952

Place of Birth:

St. Louis, Missouri

Education:

B.A. in Mathematics, 1974; D.D.A., 1978

Editorial Reviews

In this double barrel mystery, Peter Decker deals with something old and something new. For the LAPD Lieutenant, the disappearance of a young mother and her sociopathic professional killer husband evokes disquieting memories about a 15-year-old homicide, a false confession, and its strange aftermath. While contemplating that provocative case, Decker and his wife Rina Lazarus must also solve the perplexing hanging death of a neonatal nurse party girl. Crisp plotting; some fetching false leads.

Kellerman once again mixes mystery and soap opera in her 19th novel featuring Lt. Peter Decker of the LAPD and his wife, Rina Lazarus (after Blindman's Bluff). Terry McLaughlin, a doctor and battered wife, asks Decker, who's an old friend, to help mediate a meeting with her abusive husband. When McLaughlin disappears soon after the meeting, her 14-year-old son, Gabe, a gifted piano prodigy, is left on his own. Welcomed into the Decker/Lazarus household, Gabe is allowed to attend their youngest daughter's Jewish day school, even though he's Catholic. Meanwhile, Decker fears that an unidentified woman who's found hanged at a construction site may be Gabe's mother. Readers should be prepared for some unconvincing police procedure (members of Decker's team obliviously contaminate a crime scene) and some stilted prose ("Everything works out. Sometimes it works out good. And sometimes it works out bad. It's the bad that concerns me"), but series fans will cheer the serendipitous developments that lead to a better life for Gabe. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

Even though he's working an endless homicide, LAPD Lt. Peter Decker celebrates his 60th birthday by opening his house to a new child.

Believing that she'd had an abortion, Chris Donatti got into a shouting match with his wife, St. Timothy's ER physician Teresa McLaughlin. The episode would be forgettable if the argument hadn't erupted in violence and if Donatti, whom Decker first encountered 15 years ago, weren't a professional killer. Now Terry, afraid to be alone with him, begs Decker to sit in on the meeting in which she announces the terms of their separation. When she disappears the next day, the case becomes Decker's. So does the responsibility for Gabe, her 14-year-old son (though not necessarily Donatti's), who moves into Decker's house for just one night and then stays on at the insistence of Rina Lazarus, Decker's wife. And so does the death of Adrianna Blanc, a pediatric nurse at St. Tim's whose corpse is found hanging from a construction site around the corner. Adrianna's strangling, which seems linked to every felony committed in southern California and greater Las Vegas over a two-year period, ought to absorb every ounce of Decker's attention. But even though it leads him to a dozen blind alleys and two independent serial killers, it's the fate of Gabe, a gifted piano prodigy who's had to grow up awfully fast, that's more engaging.

The mystery depends on too many coincidences to take it seriously, but Kellerman (Blindman's Bluff, 2009, etc.) is more interested in the domestic details anyway.

Kirkus Reviews