Faye Kellerman

When the call comes in, Detective Peter Decker can hardly believe it. A rape at the yeshiva up in the canyon and hill country behind Los Angeles? True, there had been some recent anti-Semitic vandalism but never any violence. Not only that, but this was a strict Orthodox Jewish community, self-enclosed and suspicious of outsiders. Not much chance they'd co-operate with the police. And he is right - as Rina Lazarus, the frustratingly fascinating young widow who found the victim proves when she talks about her world. Outsider he may be, but Decker has a feeling in his policeman's bones that the cost of privacy to this determined community could be murderously high...

A California high-school student, blonde, promiscuous Cheryl Diggs is murdered and the obvious suspect is her fellow student, Chris Whitman. A seemingly straightforward case, especially when it emerges that Whitman is an East Coast mafia chieftain's son - after all, murder runs in the family. But no murder case is straightforward, as Sergeant Pete Decker well knows, and the closer he looks at this one the less satisfied he is. Though Whitman eventually confesses to the killing Decker knows the case hasn't been exhaustively investigated - and certain pieces of evidence don't quite add up. On the other hand, Decker also knows that, even if he didn't murder Diggs, Whitman is a cold-blooded killer. And that the sweet young girl now under his thrall is bound, eventually, to suffer at Whitman's hands if he walks free. How should Decker ensure justice is done?

In the comfortable surrounds of Los Angeles an affluent Jewish family disappears into thin air. The father's trade is diamonds, a risky international business, and despite the lack of bodies Detective Sergeant Pete Decker knows something is wrong. Then Honey Klein, his wife Rina's old schoolfriend, comes to stay, pulling her children out of school on a surprise - and to Decker suspicious - jaunt. Honey's husband, whose religion has recently turned to fanaticism, is also in diamonds and according to his wife currently on business in Israel. Then Honey and her children vanish, their rented car found empty at the edge of the freeway, and again Decker senses danger - danger that stems from a network of ruthless international politics, danger that could spill on to his own family's doorstep...

Detective Peter Decker's camping trip into the foothills above Los Angeles was meant to help get him closer to the young sons -Sammy and Jake - of his girlfriend, Rina Lazarus. So when the older boy stumbles on a horrific find - two charred human skeletons - Decker is filled with appalled guilt, not to say plunged into a case of double murder. And it is a truly horrifying case. One that takes him from the middle-class respectability of the suburbs to the terrifying crack dens of Hollywood Boulevard. But he is constantly drawn back to the fact that the only unifying thread in a network of violence and sickening corruption seems to be the deaths of two apparently very different young girls...

Minutes after Sergeant Pete Decker witnesses his wife give birth to their first child his policeman's instinct tells him something's wrong - not just with his baby but with the hospital itself. The disappearance of a new-born baby, together with that of the nurse in charge of the post-natal unit, confirms once again that Decker's instincts were correct and he is soon put on the case. The early signs look bad - the missing nurse's burnt-out car, together with some charred remains, are found in a remote ravine. But as Decker and his partner delve deeper, they start to uncover the network of family tragedy and betrayal that led to the frantic kidnapping of an innocent baby girl.

Even to case-hardened Detective Sergeant Pete Decker the brutal rape of Lilah Brecht, exquisite daughter of an aged Hollywood movie queen, is a disturbing act of violence. The only leads are provided by Lilah herself. However, Lilah's credibility is soon shattered when it emerges that she didn't physically see her rapist. It was only her 'gift' of second sight that enable her to 'image' her attacker. She claims that Decker is the only policeman who can truly understand and catch her attacker, who, she says, is still threatening her. Decker, however, is not so sure and is anxious to protect his heavily pregnant wife Rina from Lilah's alternately seductive and hysterical phone calls. But when Decker himself sees Lilah almost killed in a freak accident, he begins to think he may have judged her too harshly...

When Police Sergeant Peter Decker agreed to spend his honeymoon - and his New Year - with his wife's former in-laws in the most rigidly respectable Jewish district in Brooklyn, the worst he thought it could be was dull. He was wrong. For when Noam, the teenage son of a close family friend, goes missing Decker finds his honeymoon is suddenly over. Noam appears to have taken off across America with a shadowy individual who has a penchant for dominating vulnerable adolescent boys. A person whose inner violence is expressing itself more and more openly. Time is running out for Decker - and for Noam. And they both know there are only ten days between New Year and the Day of Atonement...

Late one night, Sergeant Pete Decker discovers an abandoned toddler wearing blood-stained pyjamas and covered in bee-stings. Decker and his partner Marge Dunn resolve to find her parents, but nothing prepares them for the gruesome mystery they find themselves stirring up.