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| Peter Decker and Rina Lazarus Mysteries | ||
| 1. "The Ritual Bath" | 2. "Sacred and Profane" | 3. "Milk and Honey" |
| 4. "Day of Atonement" | 5. "False Prophet" | 6. "Greivous Sin" |
| 7. "Santuary" | 8. "Justice" | 9. "Prayers of the Dead" |
| 10. "Serpent's Tooth" | 11. "Jupiter's Bones" | 12. "Stalker" |
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"Grevious Sin"
Fawcett Crest Book, September 1994 Reviewed on 5/3/00 | |||||
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Peter and Rina are delighted with their newborn baby girl, but the scene at the Los Angeles
hospital is a nightmare. Budget cutbacks and staff shortages so comprimise security in the nursey that Peter, the
ever-anxious cop, worries about his family's safety. The a baby is kidnapped and a respected nurse vanishes along
with her. Peter, his tough-talking partner Marge, and Peter's eager older daughter Cindy, pursue a twisted path of
hospital politics, misplaced passions, ans tortuous mind games of guilt and redemption that bring them face-to-face
with the most grievous sin.
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"False Prophet"
Fawcett Crest Book, August 1993 Reviewed on 5/3/00 | |||||
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Rina Lazarus is six months pregnant and miserable, while her husband, L.A. detective Pete Decker,
has his professional plate full of celebrity misfortune and mayhem. When Lilah Brecht, the beautiful if unstable owner
of a popular heath spa, is found beaten, raped, and robbed in her own home, Decker's sympathies are with her. When
he meets Davida Eversong, Lilah's faded actress mother, his heart really goes out to her. Much as Decker want to like
Lilah, she doesn't make it easy. She claims to have psychic poers, which Decker finds hard to believe. And when a family
member is murdered, he gets the distanct impression the Lilah, her mother, and her brothers are keeping secrets from
him. It will take grinding detective work, a bit of old world wisdom, and the unexpected to shine a spotlight on a family
in their own home movie of deception and deadly betrayal.
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"Day of Atonement"
Fawcett Crest Book, June 1992 Reviewed on 2/7/99 | |||||
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Brooklyn isn't exactly L.A. detective Peter Decker's first choice for a honeymoon with his
beautiful Orthodox Jewish bride, Rina. But somehow he's found himself camped out in the cramped quarters of
the parents of Rina's late husband. Since it's Jewish High holidays, Decker is trying to make the best of it. But the
sense of celebration is shattered when Noam, an Orthodox teenager, runs away from his family and his cloistered
community. Finding runaways is Decker's specialty. But in the close-knit, Orthodox community of Crown Heights,
Brooklyn, Decker will always be a stranger. It's tough getting anyone to open up about a missing kid nobody likes.
Until Decker discovers a line to the outside world that could be the hook he needs to reel in the kid and his companion --
a dangerous psychopath with nothing to lose...
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"Milk and Honey"
Fawcett Crest Book, April 1991 Reviewed on 2/7/99 | |||||
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With his Orthodox Jewish girlfriend, Rina Lazarus, thousands of miles away in New York
wrestling with his marriage proposal, LAPD detective Pete Decker is lonelier than usual on his morning drive.
Until he sees a two-year-old child covered in blood and bee stings. The child doesn't belong to anyone in the
housing complex she's found near, but Decker assumes she must have a family. By the time Rina comes back to
town, Decker is obsessed with the case -- especially when he stumbles only a grisly quadruple murder scene and
learns what can happen when passion turns into a fatal blood feud...
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"Sacred and Profane"
Fawcett Crest Book, July 1988 Reviewed on 2/7/99 | |||||
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Los Angeles police detective Peter Decker is camping in the foothills above L.A. with two
young friends -- the sons of Rina Lazarus, the beautiful Jewish widow whose religion is nearly as beguiling to Decker
as the promise of her love. It is an uneventful enough expedition, until the older boy stumbles on a truly horrifying
sight: two charred human skeletons. Suddenly Decker is plunged into a deadly case of murder. The teeth of a dead
person can tell you a lot, and when a forensic dentist determines the victims were teenage girls, Decker -- himself
the father of a sixteen-year-old Cindy -- finds himself emotionally as well as professionally involved. He's doubly
determined -- a good thing, since his investigation is pulling him in two opposing directions -- toward a genteel
suburban family... and into the terrifying crack dens of Hollywood Boulevard.
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"The Ritual Bath"
Fawcett Crest Book, November 1987 Reviewed on 2/7/99 | |||||
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Someone has declared unholy war on the holiest of places. The quiet ordered world of a yeshiva
in the California hills is shattered by an unspeakable crime: a woman is brutally raped as she returns from the mikvah,
the bathhouse where women perform their cleansing ritual. Detective Peter Decker of the LAPD has never heard
of anything like it, and he's relieved to find Rina Lazarus there as a witness. Calm and intelligent, Rina is the only
one in the community willing to cooperate with Decker, as she tries to steer him through the maze of religious
laws that thwart his investigation at every turn. But as the trail grows cold, Decker's only getting closer to Rina
and not to the rapist -- or is he? Maybe Rina was the intended victim all along. And the rapist may not stop with
rape the next time...
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| 1. "Death in Bloodhound Red" | 2. "The House on Bloodhound Lane"
| 3. "A Brace of Bloodhounds"
| 4. "Blind Bloodhound Justice"
| 5. "Ten Little Bloodhounds"
| 6. "A Bloodhound to Die For" [date unknown -- author ill
and not writing]
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"Ten Little Bloodhounds"
HarperCollins, 1999, HC Reviewed on 8/28/00 | |||||
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Jo Beth Sidden runs her own business training and selling bloodhounds. With her best dogs she
also braves the dangers in and around the Okefenokee Swamp to find lost children, escaped convicts, and illegal stashes.
On occasion, she's been known to investigate a crime or two. In her latest cast, Jo Beth is hired by a reclusive, wealthy
island matriarch to find her lost cat. Shortly thereafter, her client is murdered, and the lawyers hire Jo Beth to find the
culprit. There is a slew of suspects, all potential heirs to the matriarch's fortune. Only one is a killer. Meanwhile, a full
litter of ten baby hounds is expected back at the kennel. This rare, difficult birth isn't just a matter close to Jo Beth's
heart. It will also be a much-needed boost for her business. The quicker Jo Beth can solve this case, the sooner she can
get home to her dogs and get her life in order. But she's in for a surprise, a fight she'll never forget.
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"Blind Bloodhound Justice"
HarperCollins, 1998, HC Reviewed on 8/28/00 | |||||
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This isn't the first time that Jo Beth Sidden's life has gone to the dogs. She is a gutsy Georgia
peach who trains and sells bloodhounds. She also suits up herself and heads into the dankest swamps and redneck
junctions of the rural South looking for stashed drugs, missing children, and convicts on the run. Jo Beth has had
more than her share of sucess in the past. but her latest case has a trail so cold there isn't a scent for her trusty
hounds to trace. The crime is thrity years old. It happened on the grounds of what is now, in local lore, a "haunted house."
Two baby girls were kidnapped and their nanny murderer. The estate owner's daughter was discovered safe in a nearby
church. The other, the gardener's child, was never found. The man convicted of the two crimes was a vagrant who stuck
to his plea of innocence. Now, he's been released from prision for health reasons after serving three decades of a life
sentence. The local sheriff is concerned about the effect of the convict's return on the community. So he turns to his
best friend, Jo Beth, to dig out the long buried secrets of this mystery. What does a seasoned searcheer and always-
ready-for-a-challange woman do with a case like this? Call in the bloodhounds, of course! It'll lake just the right combination
of sniffs and smarts to finally bring the true murderer to light. Justice may be blind, but so is Jo Beth's favorite bloodhound -
and there's no better dog for nosing out the truth.
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"A Brace of Bloodhounds"
HarperCollins, 1997, HC; July 1998, PB Reviewed on 8/28/00 | |||||
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The sins of the past must be paid for again and again and again... When Gilly Ainsley shows up on
Jo Beth Sidden's doorstep, the smart and fiesty bloodhound trainer and tracker is stunned by the woman's bizarre tale
of deception and manslaughter. Gilly's mother wrote a letter before she died, a letter claiming that she would be murdered
by the man for whom she kept house - a superior court judge - and Gilly wants Jo Beth to bring the murderer to justice,
at last. Gilly's mother saw something she shouldn't have in the woods near the Okefenokee Swamp. Gilly and Jo Beth
knows that the swamp guards its secrets well. To topple this fat cat jugde will take someone who can see inside the
criminal mind, train a pack of dogs to hunt out evil, and pursue an enemy until there is nothing left but the sweat on
his palms.
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"The House on Bloodhound Lane"
HarperCollins, 1996, HC; July 1997, PB Reviewed on 8/28/00 | |||||
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Somewhere deep beneath the earth in the woods of southeast Georgia, a man is buried. Alive. With
food and water, and the terrible knowledge of who it was that did this to him. Paying for rescue but accepting death, he
waits... As her thirtieth birthday looms closer, Jo Beth Sidden doesn't think her resolution to give up smoking is such
a good idea. Especially since she's in the middle of expanding her bloodhound tracking business, and six law enforcement
officers are about to show up for a week-long course, using the dogs she has been training. Of course things can only
get worse. But Jo Beth won't let herself panic - until she learns that not only is her violent ex-husband out on parole
but a high-profile kidnapping may be too cold to track. Fearing the wordt, Jo Beth is drawn into the rescue attempt
of her career. As always, her secret weapon is to depend on the best friend any woman could have: a droppy-eared,
drooling, one-year-old, blind-from-birth bloodhound, the only creature smart enough to save her line and the day.
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"Death in Bloodhound Red"
Pineapple Press, Inc, 1995, HC Reviewed on 8/16/00 | |||||
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Jo Beth Sidden is a Georgia peach with an iron pit. At 29, she ahs realized her dream of owning
a kennel, Bloodhounds, Inc., raising and training bloodhounds for search-and-rescue missions into the Okefenokee Swamp,
a treacherous, mosquito-infested expanse of hundreds of square miles in south Georgia. She knows her stuff, but every
time she follows her dogs on a scent trail into the swamp, she risks it all from a fall, snakebite, or the pot growers who
shoot first and ask questions later. And she has to deal with macho deputies and a sheriff whose main concern is his
own reelection. To make matters worse, her violent ex-husband, Bubba, has been released from prison and is stalking her.
And in an attempt to save a friend from ruin, she organizes an illegal operation that makes a credible alibi impoosble just
when she needs it most: when's she's under indictment for attempted murder. If the man dies, the charge will be murder
one. The mysterious will of her late father, a famous artist, adds to the web of deceit and betrayal that Je Beth must
unravel to save her livelihood and her life.
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| 1. "Vanishing Act" | 2. "Dance for the Dead" | 3. "Shadow Woman"
| 4. "The Face-Changers"
| 5. "Blood Money"
| 6. "Death Benefits" [HC 1/01]
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"Dance for the Dead"
Ivy Book, April 1997, PB Reviewed on 11/21/00 | |||||
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Jane Whiteflield is the patron saint of the pursued, a native American "guide" who specializes in making victims vanish.
Calling on the ancient wisdom of the Seneca tribe and her own razor-sharp cunning, she conjures up new identities for
people with nowhere left to run. She's as quick and quiet as freshly fallen snow, and she covers a trail just as completely.
But when a calculating killer stalks an innocent eight-year-old boy, Jane faces dangerous obstacles that will put her powers -
and her life - to a terrifying test.
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"Vanishing Act"
Random House, 1995, HC Reviewed on 10/16/00 | |||||
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Jane Whitefield is a Native American guide who leads solitary outcasts through hostile territory
to escape the vegeance of their enemies. But the shaded forest paths her Seneca ancestors might have followed on
such missions have all been converted to superhighways, and now the safest way stations are crowed urban buildings
that offer the camouflage of anonymity. Still, the supply of runaways - and the need for a woman who will take risks
to save them - have never been greater. Jane knows all the tricks; in fact, she ahs invented several of them herself in
the ten years she has been teaching fugitives to live with new identities. Many of her clients have been innocent people
whom the institutions of society have been too slow and cumbersome to protect, but an increasing number have been
like gambler Harry Keple: people who aren't especially admirable, but who aren't bad enough to deserve to die prematurely.
Jane opens her door to find in her house an univited vistor named John Felker, the latest to run to her sanctuary. He
was sent, he says, by the long-vanished Harry: "He knew I was in trouble. He told me that if I needed to disappear, there
was a door out of the world. He told me that this is where it was." Felker is not like the others Jane has helped, and
everything about him is disquieting. He doesn't even know whom he is running from, only that whoever is framing him
as an embezzler has already circulated an open contract in the prison system for his death. Maybe his problems began
years ago, when he was a policeman; a good cop makes an enemy with each arrest. But perhaps he is still a policeman
and has invented precisely the right story to entrap Jane. Or perhaps he is something even worse. An unexpected
guest draws this exceptional woman into an adventure of mystery, love and sacrifice, betrayal and vegeance, and propels
her on a pursuit that takes her from the night streets of Los Angeles and Vancouver to the dark, unexplored regions
of her own mind. There is no way for Jane Whitefield to survive this particular vanishing act except to uncover the hidden
meanings of violent events that have kept police forces adn criminal syndicates equally mystified for years. She must
see beyond the cement and steel of the cities and learn to see as her Indian ancestors did: "The planet Earth was a place
where the lone hunter made his way through the wild country."
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| 1. "Bubbles Unbound" |
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"Bubbles Unbound"
Dutton, 2001, HC Reviewed on 6/18/01 | |||||
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Convinced there's more to life than giving blue dye jobs at Sandy's House of Beauty, Bubbles Yablonsky sets her sights
on a career in journalism. If her on-the-job training at the local newspaper isn't enough to make her break a nail, she's
also got her wacky family to deal with - from her bottom-feeding, social-climbing ex-husband. "Dan the Man," to her precocious
teenage daughter, Jane, to her gun-toting, shoplifting mother, LuLu, who's recently hijacked the shuttle bus from the
senior center. Then Bubbles gets what may be her dream assignment - her high-school physics teacher is threatening
to jump off the Lehigh Bridge. Surely she can answer a simple physics question and change his mind. Surely writing the
story will lead to her Big Break. But instead of the fame and fortune she expects, she finds herself accompanying a sexy
but elusive photographer with the improbable name of Stiletto on a wild ride through town, and lands up to her platinum
roots in a massive lawsuit.. and a nasty murder investigation. Can Bubbles turn this hopeless mess into her shining moment?
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