Family Business

Good luck getting computer time if you're visiting the Kellerman household. Between mom Faye, dad Jonathan and oldest son Jesse,  there is no room at the keyboard. Mystery is the latest from Jonathan, featuring his mainstay character, the psychologist Alex Delaware. Delaware's best friend, LAPD Lt. Milo Sturgis, often consults with him when trying to unravel a particularly thorny murder that may have some psychological motivations. In Mystery, the victim is a young woman that Delaware and his ladylove Robin Castagna actually saw alive when they had a last meal at a favorite old hotel and restaurant before it closed. The mystery referenced in the title begins with trying to find out who the young woman was, let alone who was responsible for her death. Milo and Alex find themselves involved in the world of very high-end online dating, as well as some of the stock characters of rich folk who live sordid lives behind the well-manicured lawns and mansion walls they show to the world. As the 26th Delaware novel, Mystery offers very few surprises. Milo and Alex banter and use their individual styles to gain information from the people they interview. There's an interesting sidelight as Alex consults with an old patient who wants to be able to prepare her young son for her impending death from cancer, but mostly this is Kellerman pere skillfully traveling a well-worn path.

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Faye Kellerman's "Decker/Lazarus" novels might prompt some initial head-scratching in a new reader -- the Decker and Lazarus involved are husband and wife, but only the husband -- LAPD Lt. Peter Decker -- is an investigator. His wife, Rina Lazarus, doesn't actually get involved in the crime-solving business. But given the focus on family and its role in the lives of her characters, Peter and Rina are more of a team than a lot of other literary partners. In Hangman, Decker and his detectives are confronted with a young nurse hanged at a construction site. Other than a penchant for partying, the victim doesn't seem to have anything in her life that would bring about this kind of horrific death, which leaves Decker and his crew stumped. Decker himself is distracted. Many years ago, teenager Chris Whitman confessed to a crime he didn't commit to spare his girlfriend Terry McLaughlin the trauma of a trial; when the truth came out and Chris was freed, the pair married and they have a son, Gabe. But Chris is now a contract killer and Terry is worried about his instability. When they both disappear, Decker seems to have little choice but to bring Gabe into his own home while he tries to find out what happened. Although all the Kellermans are practicing Orthodox Jews, Faye is the only one who includes that dimension in the lives of her characters. Food customs, table fellowship, hospitality traditions and the like are all woven into the story at almost every point. Faye Kellerman's books may sometimes feel as much like a story about a family in which one of the members happens to be a homicide detective than they are about a homicide detective and his cases, but that's a large part of the appeal for her fans and it adds layers to her works that not all crime or police stories offer.

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The Executor is Jesse Kellerman's fourth novel and follows the pattern he's developed so far of excellent odd-numbered works and even-numbered ones that are so-so at best. Unlike his parents, Kellerman fils doesn't write novels with recurring characters, although the central characters of his last three novels have a significant whiff of similarity that approaches interchangeability. Like Trouble's Jonah Stem and The Genius's Ethan Muller, Joseph Geist is an educated young man not exactly sure of his place in the world. Dedicated to what he calls "the life of the mind," Geist is at the end of his rope in many ways -- his girlfriend has broken up with him and kicked him out of their apartment, and his academic work is stalled by an advisor who thinks very little of him and by his own inertia. He answers a curious ad in the campus paper from an old woman seeking a "conversationalist," and finds himself enjoying the "work" of discussing great ideas with German expatriate Alma as much as he appreciates the regular pay. Alma, for her part, appreciates Joseph's company enough to invite him to move into a room in her huge mansion, helping solve his last problem of not having a place to stay. His situation seems ideal, but events soon turn it otherwise. The younger Kellerman has also worked more in the psychological thriller vein than his parents, who have trended towards the procedural aspect of crime writing. Executor's failure comes in its protagonist. Joseph is unsympathetic at best and annoying at worst when we meet him, and it's hard to care about whether or not he will make the right choices when confronted with the chance to do so, or what kind of consequences the wrong choices might mean for him. After the story of a basically good person confronting evil in Trouble and of a shallow person learning how to lift himself up in The Genius, The Executor offers an unlikeable person whose we have little reason to care about. Since it lacks Trouble's grotesque interest in grotesque details, The Executor is not nearly as bad, but it's definitely a disappointment following The Genius.