678 Pages, large print
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
I guess it's a matter of taste....,
This review is from: Stone Kiss (Peter Decker & Rina Lazarus Novels) (Hardcover)
I read one or two books a week. I've never felt compelled to write a review before, but even prior to finishing this book I knew I'd write this one. To my mind, this book was *the* best in the series! Imagine my surprise to come online and discover the negative reviews.I have to disagree with several of the previous reviewers. I thought this book was fabulous. Yes, it was dark. Yes, it was complex. Yes, it was filled with subtext about the Hassidic community. Yes, there were many intertwining subplots. These are the things I loved about it. I can't remember the last time I finished a book feeling so totally sated. I tend to choose authors who write series with specific protagonists. Too often, I feel that the first book or two, the author feels they have said all they can say about the character(s) and their enviroment, and the books are reduced to simply action plots. "Stone Kiss" not only gives us plot, but a richer understanding of the main characters. The story isn't simply placed in an unusual community; it is exciting to watch the characters interact with the community, to assimilate this information into our understanding of who Decker and Lazurus are. The writing was tight, and perfect. I haven't enjoyed a book this much in a long, long time.
12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
I'm lukewarm....,
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This review is from: Stone Kiss (Peter Decker & Rina Lazarus Novels) (Hardcover)
on Faye Kellerman's 14th book in the Decker/Lazarus series, "Stone Kiss". "Justice", an earlier novel, featured a colorful character named Chris Donatti. While I applaud Kellerman for bringing him back -- a complex character, with a love/hate relationship with Peter Decker; I wish she hadn't chosen New York as the setting.Kellerman has moved Decker to the Big Apple to help family before; but this one's a stretch. He's there to help his half-brother Jonathan's family find Jon's neice -- a girl by the name of Shayndie Lieber (whose brief appearance does nothing to make her character believable!) Decker's dealing with ultra-Orthodox Jews, and, unfortunately, there is little positive about the sect he tries to help, and far too much detail in this plot. Although it is the primary plot, it grows boring, and the reader turns to the evolving clash between Decker and Donatti, who is surprisingly involved on the fringes of Shayndie's disappearance. Over the top, as well, are the tales of Rina and her endless quest for shopping in the Big Apple - and the contrived plot of his staying in New York, well past the time he should have gone south with her. Weaving in a relationship between Rina and Donatti didn't help the novel, it hurt. I still love this series, and love to explore what I can learn about the Jewish faith from Kellerman's characters. But Peter's a homicide Lieutenant in southern California....and there should be many, many untold stories to be resolved there, surrounded by the interesting people in his squad. Things that saved 3 stars, other than Donatti were the amount of time Kellerman spent fleshing out the character of Randy, Decker's real brother...and I couldn't help but enjoy the twist at the end of the novel on another former Kellerman villain...Steven Gilbert. Enough said! Wait for the paperback, or go to the library for this one!
16 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
One of Faye's weaker (confusing) plots, heavy on Judaism,
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This review is from: Stone Kiss (Peter Decker & Rina Lazarus Novels) (Hardcover)
With more than a dozen entries in the Peter Decker/Rina Lazarus series, certainly each new book by Faye Kellerman is anxiously awaited by her fans. We have learned to tolerate a good deal of "discussion" (promotion?) of the Jewish faith as part of her stories because we love her characters, especially the lead couple, and the suspenseful mysteries which normally surround them. However, "Stone Kiss" left us a little cold on two fronts.First, the illumination of Orthodox Judaism, this time especially the very strict Chasidic practices, is so dominant in this story it gets tiresome and annoying. The mystery involves a number of relatives and half-brothers and so on, but at times we began wondering if Kellerman was taking up for, or trying to demean, the lives and mores of this group. Before it's all over, various of the Chasidic men turn out to be smugglers, dopers, customers of prostitution, etc. If this was meant to suggest "we're all human", it was lost on us. Secondly, the story is dark and confusing. Rina has such a small part she might as well have just been on vacation -- we could have saved several pages of her shopping and mixing with the family and so forth while she visits the old homesteads in NYC. The co-star (with Decker) is really a porno-king criminal named Chis Donatti, whose role and relationships with Decker are reprised from Kellerman's earlier book "Justice" (and we suggest you read that story first if you missed it). While Decker is trying to help the family find a missing teenager and niece of the murdered brother, Donatti keeps showing up at one location after another throughout every section of the book. Eventually one thinks he must be superman to get around as fast as he does, and to just conveniently know where everybody's going to be about five minutes after they themselves decide. The tension between Decker and Donatti is probably about the only thing that saves an otherwise plodding and confusing plot, with which we found ourselves caring little about the outcome. Kellerman is a good writer and seems to publish at a pace adequate to maintain quality. But to us, she needs to temper her proselytizing a little and draw a clearer and more compelling mystery line to preserve or improve her reputation.
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