WALKING SHADOWS

4 stars out of 5

"Old friends, old friends,
Sat on their parkbench like bookends..."

--Paul Simon

After so many years of reading and enjoying the books in this series, the words to that song popped into my head as I started this one. I've followed the adventures of Detective Peter Decker and his wife, Rina Lazarus, from the time they met, fell in love and married (beginning, if I recall correctly, with The Ritual Bath in 1986). I loved watching their blended family grow and the interactions between Peter and Rina as she guides their Orthodox Jewish household and offers sage advice to him as he works to solve crimes.

Given that expectation, then, I was a bit disappointed with this book, in which Rina plays what to me is a very insignificant role. Yes, she offers some coffee and sympathy when he gets bogged down in as-yet-unsolvable details of the case he's working on, but most of what little on-page time she gets is spent making kosher sandwiches. In all honesty, though, I've said the same for all the other books written since the empty-nesters and grandparents moved from the hustle and bustle of Los Angeles to Greenbury, New York, a small, upstate college town (I believe this is the fourth). 

For both Peter and Rina, that move was supposed to put them in a relatively quiet, relaxing world; but bored with doing nothing, Peter joined the local police force, not really expecting much action. Needless to say, no sooner than he signed on, homicides started happening. This one - the body of a badly beaten young man - is discovered by Peter himself. In part because he lived in nearby Hamilton, there's some clamor over territorial rights, and the Hamilton police chief insists that his daughter, Lenora Baccus ("Lennie") be assigned temporarily to assist Decker and his Greenbury team. As sort of an aside, Lennie formerly worked for the Philadelphia police, specifically with Decker's grown daughter Cindy. Coincidence? Of course not; since Lennie has no idea that Peter is Cindy's father, it adds a couple of pages to the book by allowing him to call Cindy to check up on Lennie's performance since he really doesn't fully trust her or the reason her father lent her to Greenbury.

Peter doesn't trust her father's motives, either (nor, for that matter, those of most of the police teams of Hamilton or Greenbury). Some of that distrust may be well-earned; early on, the supposedly squeaky clean victim, Brady Neil, turned out to be involved in criminal activities. Then it was learned that his father, Brandon Gratz, is in jail for the murder of two owners of a local jewelry store. That link, in turn, leads to possible connections to members of the Hamilton police, whose detectives - including Lennie's father - were the lead investigators in the jewelry store murders. The trail also leads Peter and Rina to Florida, where they can spend a few paragraphs visiting both their aging mothers (Ida Decker, Peter's mom, is a spry 94).

Actually, the story itself is quite engrossing, but there are way, way too many characters to keep straight; about halfway through, I totally gave up trying, figuring things would sort themselves out in the end (which they did, for the most part). But keeping them all straight was made even more difficult because just about everyone in the cast had a name beginning with a "B" - either first or last. Finally, although most of the loose ends are tidied up by the end, there were a couple of stragglers; I can only assume those will become fodder for the plot of a future book (and yes, I'll be among the first in line to get it). That's because even after my kvetching about this one, Peter and Rina still feel like old friends and people with whom I'd love to sit on a park bench and chat. Oy, the stories we could share!

Walking Shadows by Faye Kellerman (William Morrow, August 2018); 384 pp.