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    The Burnt House: A Decker/Lazarus Novel
    Unavailable
    The Burnt House: A Decker/Lazarus Novel
    Unavailable
    The Burnt House: A Decker/Lazarus Novel
    Ebook531 pages8 hours

    The Burnt House: A Decker/Lazarus Novel

    By Faye Kellerman

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    At 8:15 in the morning, a small commuter plane carrying forty-seven passengers crashes into an apartment building in Granada Hills, California. Shock waves ripple through Los Angeles, as L.A.P.D. Lieutenant Peter Decker works overtime to calm rampant fears of a 9/11-type terror attack. But a grisly mystery lives inside the plane's charred and twisted wreckage: the unidentified bodies of four extra travelers. And there is no sign of an airline employee who was supposedly on the catastrophic flight.

    Decker and his wife, Rina, have personal reasons for being profoundly shaken by the tragedy, since the "accident" occurred frighteningly close to their daughter Hannah's school. Luckily, their child and her schoolmates escaped unscathed. But the fate of the unaccounted-for flight attendant—twenty-eight-year-old Roseanne Dresden—remains a question mark more than a month after the horrific event, when the young woman's irate stepfather calls, insisting that she was never onboard the doomed plane. Instead, he claims, she was most likely murdered by her abusive, unfaithful husband. But why, then, was Roseanne's name included on the passenger list?

    Under intense pressure from the department to come up with answers, Decker launches an investigation that carries him down a path of tragic history, dangerous secrets, and deadly lies—and leads him to the corpse of a three-decades-missing murder victim. And as the jagged pieces slowly fall into place, a frightening picture begins to form: a mind-searing portrait of unimaginable evil that will challenge Decker's and Rina's own beliefs about guilt and innocence and justice.

    Combining relentless suspense with intense, multilayered human drama, The Burnt House is Faye Kellerman at her mesmerizing best.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateOct 13, 2009
    ISBN9780061739774
    Unavailable
    The Burnt House: A Decker/Lazarus Novel
    Author

    Faye Kellerman

    Faye Kellerman lives with her husband, New York Times bestselling author Jonathan Kellerman, in Los Angeles, California, and Santa Fe, New Mexico.

    Read more from Faye Kellerman

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    Reviews for The Burnt House

    4/5

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    • 4/5
      When a mysterious plane crashes, it leaves the charred remains of four unidentified bodies. As LAPD Lieutenant Peter Decker and his wife Rina investigate, they soon must race to unravel crucial clues before something sinister happens to anyone else.
    • 5/5
      The Burnt House was a great read. Decker & Lazarus, long-time working duo of the series quickly become old friends and acquaintances to this first time reader. The book is so well-written, combining police procedure with family life, that I felt completely at home with the characters. The story starts off with a literal BANG!! as a commuter plane crashes into an apartment building. So many twists and turns begin when a search for the remains of one flight attendantpurported to have been on the plane, becomes more complex with the appearance of anotherbody in the rubble. Police procedure and how their families must cope became more real to mein this book than similar books I have read in the past. Just when I thought I had it all figured out(as did the team of investigators), it spun around in a completely different direction. I found thebook at once believable yet surprising, and intricately woven. I am certainly going to search outmore of the many earlier books featuring this duo.
    • 4/5
      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.
    • 5/5
      It has been a long time since I have read a Peter Decker mystery and this one did not disappoint. After a plane crashes into an apartment building, Decker and his detectives investigate a woman whose husband ensists she was on the plane but whose parents don't think so. When none of her remains are recovered but a 30 year old body is, Decker has two cases to solve.
    • 3/5
      The 16th Decker novel and the 2nd I have read. An interesting (albiet improbable) plot line involves an unidentifed body found (unearthed?) following a horrific plane crash and a missing stewardess who may or may not have been on the flight. An enjoyable read if not both a little predictable. the interesting part of the Decker series is the lead detective's healthy home life - this is clearly an important part of his character according to Kellerman but felt fairly 1 dimensional to me and as such dissapointed
    • 3/5
      The 16th in the Peter Decker series starts with a very dramatic plane crash, and that was very well handled. But then it devolves into a missing person/murder case, and strange things begin to happen. I liked the premise - that not all the people who disappear during catastrophes died as was expected. Was the stewardess on the flight? was she murdered? did she run away? and then then find an extra corpse on the plane crash site - from a murder 30 years ago. Kellerman works both these murders and her solution is about fate and unexpected connections. It was okay, but I was expecting something better to flourish from the beginning of this book. Also, Rina is starting to feel a bit cipherish to me, less a real person and more just a perfect religious wife.
    • 5/5
      This sixteenth novel in the series about Peter and Rina Decker is marred only by a coincidence that simplifies the plot but is too great to be realistic. There is less material in this book about the Decker family but their few conversations continue the attention to the reader's education about Judaism and the final scene is a classic Faye Kellerman description of the wisdom of her heroine.
    • 4/5
      Burnt Houseby Faye KellermanGenre: MysteryBook #16 in the Peter Decker and Rita Lazarus seriesA plane crashes into an apartment building and flight attendant Roseanne Dresden perishes in the crash - or does she? PlotA plane crashes. Everyone believes that Roseanne Dresden, a flight attendant, died in the crash. Her family thinks her husband Ivan killed her and used the crash to hide the fact. When the plane crashed, it destroyed an apartment building, uncovering a previously dead body identified as Beth Hernandez. Raymond Holmes was Roseanne's boyfriend, and it turns out used to be Belize Hernandez, Manny Hernandez's brother. Manny was married to Beth and they were part of a hippie church. We never fully learn which brother did it, but there was an argument and Beth died. Manny disposed of the body; he took the church's money so he and Belize could go on the lam. Manny purportedly dies soon after in a bar fight; Belize changes his name to Raymond Holmes. Turns out Roseanne was killed by Patricia (aka Marina), Ivan's exotic dancer girlfriend.SettingLos Angeles, Burbank, San Josemodern dayCharactersPeter Decker - detectiveRoseanne Dresden - flight attendant, missing, though dead in crashIsabella (Beth) Hernandez - dead woman discovered in apartment building leveled by crash, cold caseMarge - detectiveOliver - detectiveRina - Peter's wifePacingsteady, nice way of adding information and keeping the reader guessingNarrationthird person=====Language - strongSex - talk of wanting to have sex, prostitutes, cheating, swinging, nothing too explicitViolence - descriptions of crimesHomosexuality? none
    • 4/5
      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 disappoint fans of the series or any newbie's starting to read it.
    • 5/5
      Call me "soft" but this was my favorite Decker story so far.
    • 2/5
      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 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.
    • 4/5
      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 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.
    • 4/5
      This was a good book but a bit drawn out in the middle. They went really indepth in the middle during parts of the book and then flew through the ending. Overall I would recommend this book for others who enjoy a good who done it?!