The Forgotten (Peter Decker & Rina Lazarus Novels)
L.A. homicide detective Peter Decker and Rina Lazarus, his Orthodox  Jewish wife, return in a new entry in thispopular series. Faye  Kellerman can be counted on to deliver emotional complexity along with suspense,  and inThe Forgottenit comes from the relationship between Peter and  Jacob, Rina's troubled teenage son. Jacob has a personal connection to the event  that sets off this intricately plotted novel, the defacing of Rina's synagogue  by one of his classmates. Ernesto Golding can't explain why he vandalized the  synagogue, but when he and his therapists are murdered months after the  incident, Peter realizes that something the teenager told him when admitting his  guilt may hold the key to the killings: Ernesto's belief that his grandfather  may have been a Nazi who posed as a Jew to escape to South America after the  war. Investigating Ernesto's story gives Rina a strand of the plot to tease out;  meanwhile, Peter concentrates on another motive for the therapist murders that  involves computer fraud, the College Board exams, and the high cost exacted by  parents who pressure their teenagers to succeed.Kellerman skillfully keeps the dramatic tension going as she pulls all the  pieces of her complex plot together. But what makes this novel her best yet is  her acutely revealing portrait of Jacob, struggling with the existential angst  of adolescence as he attempts to reconcile his devotion to Judaism with the  temptations of contemporary life, from drugs to sex. She brilliantly limns his  search for identity, intimacy, and independence even as he redefines his  relationship to Peter and Rina, in a scenario that resounds with psychological  truth.The Forgottenis a terrific addition to the Kellerman oeuvre.  While she's always been an exceptional illustrator of the emotional life of the  family, this time she writes with an expertise that may owe something to  professional insights of her husband, authorJonathan Kellerman, who's also a child psychologist.--Jane Adams--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.