THE HUNT

3.5 stars out of 5

That this reportedly is the final book in the Rina Lazarus/Peter Decker series makes me sad; after all, I don't think I've missed a single one since the first 26 books ago and have always looked forward to whatever's next. But what makes me sadder is that it just wasn't very satisfying. Yes, it wraps up things like Peter's last still-open case as a detective with the small-town Greenbury Police Department (New York) before the long-married couple embark on a previously announced phase of their lives. It's a leftover from an earlier book, but it's been too long since I read that one so I never quite reconnected.

But mostly, the focus is on recurring character Chris Donatti, the near sociopath and sex-addicted birth father of the Deckers' musically talented foster son Gabe. His birth mother, a wacky physician named Terry, is missing; Peter ends up calling in Chris, who apparently never stopped loving his ex-wife (insofar as he's capable of loving). He finds her with her daughter, on the lam from her current husband in India - but her son seems to have been kidnapped and even though she claims to hate Chris, she tells him she'll do anything it takes to get him back. And what it takes, it seems, is catering to Chris's incessant sexual demands.

And therein lies one of my issues; given Chris's addiction, I "get" the incessant part, but the graphic descriptions that accompanied each and every encounter were over the moon (probably the only place they didn't do the nasty). Don't misunderstand - I'm no prude, and read nothing that I've never heard of before; I understand the relevance of sex to the complex relationship between Chris and Terry. But to my eyes it was more than a little too explicit more than a little too often.

Adding to my discontent is that while both Peter's investigation and Chris's attempts to rescue Terry's son and win her back, Rina's contributions are mostly missing; when she shows up - which isn't very often - it's mostly to hug and feed her kids and reassure her husband that retiring is the right thing for him to do. Peter swears he won't retire until he and his partner Tyler McAdams get to the bottom of the case they're working on, but even he seems to not have his heart in his work. In any event, way more time was spent on speculating what might have happened than on the actual investigation.

Peter's long-time LAPD partner, Marge, makes an appearance, as do all the Decker kids, grandkids and even their mothers (bless their nonagenarian hearts). As such, the ending brings closure to just about everything in mostly expected ways; the only question left in my mind is whether Gabe and/or others from the Decker family might find their way into a new series of their own. All in all, it's worth reading, but I just wish it had left me with a more upbeat attitude toward all those books I've read over the years.

The Hunt by Faye Kellerman (William Morrow, August 2022); 492 pp.