Gun Games by Faye Kellerman

I always look forward to a new Decker/Lazarus novel by Kellerman. This novel just moves along steadily, much like an actual police investigation, and inexhorably towards its final destination, without too many surprises along the way, really.

When the mother of a good, but nerdy, student at an exclusive prep school who has committed suicide contacts Decker and asks him to dig deeper into her son's death, she provides just enough justification for him to open the investigation. The family has never had any firearms in the house, and no one knows how the boy, Gregory, got the stolen pistol he used to end his life. All of the physical evidence on the scene confirms that it was a suicide, but Decker agrees to give it a second look.

(By the way, I caught one mistake in this book. The suicide was committed with a pistol - mentioned several times - but when Decker's detectives revisit the scene later, the cleaning crew has already cleaned up the mess from - the shotgun blast. Where did Kellerman paste that bit of text from, I wonder?)

When a second student from the same school, Myra Gelb, also kills herself, and the pistol used turns out also to have been stolen a number of years earlier, Decker and his detectives Marge Dunn and Scott Oliver turn up the heat on the investigation a bit.

In a seemingly unrelated story, we get to follow Decker and Rina's fifteen year old foster son, Gabe, as he readies himself for study at either Harvard or Juilliard next year, and begins to audition for some summer jobs as a pianist. He meets a cute Persian Jewish girl, Yasmine, who is only fourteen, at a coffee shop, and she incites him to go to La Traviata with her, as she has somehow acquired two tickets, and none of her friends or family are really interested in opera - her very strict and traditional father has determined that she will be a doctor someday, and music is just foolishness. Of  course, the two become infatuated with one another, and carry on a texting love affair and clandestine trysts for weeks while Decker is busily investigating teen suicides.

Kellerman walks a fine line, politically speaking, on a couple of issues in this book, giving us some almost contradictory messages.

"Guns are bad, as they contribute to teen suicide."
"Guns are good, as they allow one of our heros to defend himself against a group of attackers."
"Bullying is a huge problem in our schools, and you should always report it to your teachers or principal."
"Teachers and the principal are totally ineffectual in countering bullying, and your best bet is to take matters into your own hands, or make some sort of accomodation with the bullies."

A fast, fun read.

Hangman by Faye Kellerman

Faye Kellerman always provides a good read with her Decker/Lazarus novels. A couple of characters from one of Decker's early cases, Chris Donetti, and his wife, Terry, show up in this one. Donetti and Terry are in a troubled marriage. Well, living as the wife of a contract killer can't be all roses, now, can it? Terry asks Decker to be there when she meets with Chris to tell him she wants a separation. Shortly after the meeting, things go awry, and Terry disappears, leaving behind their teenaged son, Gabe.

Right about that time, a woman's body is discovered, hanging naked from the rafters of a house under construction, and Decker gets the case. As he digs into her life to try to find some suspects, the novel turns into the usual methodic investigation, and eventually takes some odd twists, as there turn out to be more than one villain in the piece.

But this novel isn't as much about detective work as it is about family, really. Decker and Rina take in Donetti's son, Gabe, and give him a home while Decker is trying to find out what became of his mother. It's unclear whether she was murdered by Chris, or whether she took the opportunity to run away from her life, leaving her son behind. He stays in the bedroom that used to belong to Rina's two sons, who are now away at college, with only Hannah still at home. Hannah becomes like a big sister to Gabe, and gets him involved in helping out with her school choir, as he's a quite accomplished pianist.

When the family gets together for Decker's birthday, they include Gabe, and make him feel welcome in all ways, for as long as he needs to stay. Rina and Decker are an example of how good, stable, parents treat their kids, and other people's kids, too. In real life, people like them quietly go about helping others, and tend to acquire quite a few "adoptees", who forever feel like part of the family.

So, the murder eventually gets solved, and all is well, but I think Mrs. Kellerman just needed to add another personality to the Decker/Lazarus mix, and did it in a way that took the edge off of what could have been a brutal and depressing novel.