The Theory of Death

August 17, 2015
Set in Greenbury, N.Y., bestseller Kellerman’s plodding 23rd mystery featuring Peter Decker and Rina Lazarus (after 2014’s Murder 101) opens with the discovery in a forest of the corpse of college student Eli Wolf, who apparently shot himself. Decker, who now works for the Greenbury PD after recently retiring from the LAPD, investigates. Meanwhile, Tyler McAdams, who left Greenbury PD for Harvard Law School, returns home to study for his exams. Tyler tags along as Decker tries to determine why Eli, who comes from Mennonite stock and was a gifted mathematician, would have committed suicide. When one of Eli’s classmates turns out to be a woman who has had a crush on Tyler for years, she can’t be ruled out as a suspect in what develops into a murder case. Series fans will be pleased to see that the relationship between Decker and Lazarus, neither of whom has any flaws, remains as affectionate as ever. New readers should be prepared for plenty of schmaltz.

Faye Kellerman's well-loved police lieutenant, Pete Decker, returns in a complex whodunit that takes place in the lofty world of academic mathematics, with the apparent suicide of a preeminent student. Richard Ferrone's narration is well suited to Decker's first-person musings as he probes the prickly personalities in the Math Department at elite Kneed Loft College. But Ferrone's steady pace and mostly unembellished characters fail to add spark or clarity to the dialogue or a narrative that is full of mathematical details. Ferrone adds color to the Asian and Italian Department heads, but most of the college students are indistinguishable from each other. Ferrone's Decker remains stalwart as another death forces him to consider the possibility of a conspiracy beyond the academics, which leads to a shattering discovery. N.M.C. © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine

May 15, 2015
You'd think former LAPD lieutenant Peter Decker could relax a little in small-town Greenbury, NY, where he heads the police department. But, no, a naked corpse has been discovered in the woods. Tracing the victim to nearby Kneed Loft College with the help of friend and former Greenbury colleague Tyler McAdams, Decker discovers a bunch of nerdy math types-turned-evil geniuses.

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 15, 2015

You'd think former LAPD lieutenant Peter Decker could relax a little in small-town Greenbury, NY, where he heads the police department. But, no, a naked corpse has been discovered in the woods. Tracing the victim to nearby Kneed Loft College with the help of friend and former Greenbury colleague Tyler McAdams, Decker discovers a bunch of nerdy math types-turned-evil geniuses.

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 1, 2015
Detective Peter Decker welcomes his insufferable former colleague Tyler McAdams, shot at the end of Murder 101 (2014), back to the Greenbury, New York, police force with open arms and violent death. McAdams, who's supposed to be studying for his exams at Harvard Law School, says he wants to stay with Decker and his wife, Rina, for peace and quiet and a chance to hit the books without distractions. Distractions promptly arise when Kneed Loft College senior Eli Wolf is found shot to death, his clothes piled neatly next to him, in a snowy field. A car accident six years ago that killed the friend who was driving and broke his brother Jacob's leg scrambled Eli's brain. Born into a Mennonite family whose rapport with each other is laconic even when they're most demonstrative, he's been drifting further into the world of theoretical mathematics and away from everything else. Now that Decker must question Jacob, Eli's closemouthed parents, and his even more socially challenged mentors and friends at Kneed Loft, McAdams is eager to get in on the action-if that's what you want to call the brightly didactic passages explaining Fourier transforms and stochastic oscillators that take the place of Rina Decker's customary disquisitions on Jewish rituals. Fueled by the discovery of some incomprehensible papers Eli hid in his dorm room, Decker and McAdams talk to the boy's sort-of friend Mallon Euler, who turns out to have quite a crush on McAdams; Dr. Theo Rosser, Eli's megalomaniac adviser; and paranoid Dr. Katrina Belfort, who lacks the tenure that would presumably suck her last remaining humanity from her. The discovery of a second corpse sharpens the urgency of their inquiries but does nothing to focus them, until eventually one of their several theories of the case, no more or less interesting than the others, hits home. Move this one to the top of your list if you still pine for linear algebra. The unenlightened may want to wait and see what's on offer next term.

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