Mighty Ego
Wieder habe ich die englische Original-Ausgabe gelesen, "Prayers for the Dead"
I REALLY LOVED TO READ THIS. You have a short sequence in the beginning which left me wondering all through the rest of the ...
Wieder habe ich die englische Original-Ausgabe gelesen, "Prayers for the Dead"
I REALLY LOVED TO READ THIS. You have a short sequence in the beginning which left me wondering all through the rest of the book. Then you find the police at the site of the murder of a successful, renowned and wealthy heart surgeon, who also excelled at being deeply religious and very philantrophic. But who could have committed the ghastly crime? And, furthermore, why?
This is number 9 in the Decker/Lazarus series but it might be read on its own – any reference to the past will be explained in this very book, thus not requiring to have read the other titles but offering more insight to some of the past then the first eight books did. I liked the clever trick author Kellerman did about that.
The case is complex, it is topical, and motivations go way beyond what I had expected. LAPD Lieutenant Decker, now newly appointed head of the operations, finds himself unexpectedly personnally involved – his wife Rina knew the dead man. And more, she once was close to one of his sons, who turned away from the proprietary christian beliefs of his family to become a catholic priest. Investigations include researching within the victim’s large family, with grown-up children not even close to their father’s success or money, a biker gang, and the victims extended business activities. The setup kept me wondering all throughout the book. For those sensitive about that, no sexual assault in this book, and the gory details left reduced to what the cops see when finding a dead body (well, that can hardly be hygienical very often).
Apart from the aforementioned fact that you might start on the series with this book, those who know it will love to learn that, finally, Rina is back to play a significant role, not only privately, but, much to Decker’s dislike, in the case. Same is true for Decker’s former “partner in crime“, cop Marge Dunn. Also, Judaism again plays a bigger role: Decker married an orthodox jewish wife, same background you may find out about the author. Along with the books, some of the tradition is being explained, this time, the namegiving prayers for the dead and some others. Additionally, the author enters a field you might consider the counterpart for christians, constantly mentioning that the dead doctor was a fundamentalist and even disapproved about one of his sons becoming “only“ a catholic. Yes, there are pretty fundamentalist sects within christian belief but they probably would not call themselves thus nor would anybody openly refer to them as such all the time. It sounds a bit either PC or not knowing that Kellerman does not just give that group a name, she might at least have picked an invented one (there is one someplace, but less often than “fundamentalist“ which sounds rather awkward).
This minor point of criticism does not lessen how much I really enjoyed this book. A solid 5 stars.