The Burnt House by Faye Kellerman

In The Burnt House, Decker is called in to help out at the scene of a terrible plane crash. Soon the parents of a flight attendant contact him and insist their daughter, Roseanne Dresden, didn’t die in the plane crash. Decker feels for the parents and does a little digging to see what he and his team can uncover. When the last body is recovered almost everyone expects it to be Roseanne’s. When it turns out it’s not, the investigation gets really interesting. Who can this person be? Where is Roseanne? Decker and his team conduct two investigations to get to the bottom of things.

Kellerman’s story is straightforward and presented in a chronological order making it easy to read. Her characters are likable, believable and fun to read about. One of my favourite characters is Rina. She isn’t a major character in the story, but I like her and the fact that she makes many references to Judaism. (I find other religions fascinating). I wonder if she plays a more active role in other books.

I liked that the author used all of the characters in the story line and that it didn’t turn into a one-man show with Decker having all of the answers and finding all of the clues and information to advance/complete the investigations. I find this happens with other mysteries far too often and the minor characters just look incompetent.

This is my first book by Kellerman. It won’t be the last. It looks like I have a huge backlist to catch up on.

Definitely recommended.

I got this book from the HarperCollins Canada Reading Group on Facebook.