Day of Atonement: A Decker/Lazarus Novel (Decker/Lazarus Novels, 4)

Peter Decker of the L.A.P.D. never dreamed he'd be spending his honeymoon with his new wife, Rina Lazarus, in an Orthodox Jewish enclave in Brooklyn, New York& or that a terrible event would end it so abruptly. But a boy has vanished from the midst of this close-knit religious community, a troubled youth fleeing the tight bonds and strictures he felt were strangling him. The runaway, Noam, is not traveling alone. A killer has taken him under his wing to introduce Noam to a savage world of blood and terror. And now Decker must find them both somewhere in America before a psychopath ends the life of a confused and frightened youngster whose only sin was to want something more. Publishers Weekly Kellerman's fourth mystery to feature Peter Decker and Rina Lazarus, last seen in Milk and Honey , begins in the Orthodox Jewish community of Boro Park, Brooklyn (N.Y.), where the newlyweds have traveled to celebrate the High Holy Days with Rina's family and that of her late first husband. Early on, Peter, a detective with the LAPD, makes a deeply troubling discovery about his own family, which he is unable to pursue when the disappearance of one of the community's teenage boys commands his attention. Peter learns that the youngster has been befriended by a disturbed man, and the hunt takes Peter out of the tight-knit Jewish neighborhood and. with Rina, eventually back to L.A. There, the boy's involvement with crime and the deteriorating state of his companion add urgency to a search that culminates in a dangerous encounter on the deserted outskirts of the airport. The plight of the lost youth is less compelling than the conflicts faced by Peter as he struggles with unsettling consequences of his past, the demands of his newly adopted religion and the personal vagaries of his much-loved, independent Rina. The odd couple of the genre remains interesting, but this adventure lacks the passion and suspense of earlier outings. (June) 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... -- Amazon.com Detective team Peter Decker and Rina Lazarus, in Brooklyn for the Jewish High Holy Days after their marriage, find themselves on the trail of an Orthodox teenage runaway kidnapped by a psychopath