Burnt House

by Faye Kellerman

Paperback, 2008

Status

Available

Collection

Publication

Harper (2008), Edition: 1st Ed., 624 pages

Description

At 8:15 in the morning, a small commuter plane carrying forty-seven passengers crashes into an apartment building in Granada Hills, California. Shock waves ripple through Los Angeles, as L.A.P.D. Lieutenant Peter Decker works overtime to calm rampant fears of a 9/11-type terror attack. But a grisly mystery lives inside the plane's charred and twisted wreckage: the unidentified bodies of four extra travelers. And there is no sign of an airline employee who was supposedly on the catastrophic flight. Decker and his wife, Rina, have personal reasons for being profoundly shaken by the tragedy, since the "accident" occurred frighteningly close to their daughter Hannah's school. Luckily, their child and her schoolmates escaped unscathed. But the fate of the unaccounted-for flight attendant--twenty-eight-year-old Roseanne Dresden--remains a question mark more than a month after the horrific event, when the young woman's irate stepfather calls, insisting that she was never onboard the doomed plane. Instead, he claims, she was most likely murdered by her abusive, unfaithful husband. But why, then, was Roseanne's name included on the passenger list? Under intense pressure from the department to come up with answers, Decker launches an investigation that carries him down a path of tragic history, dangerous secrets, and deadly lies--and leads him to the corpse of a three-decades-missing murder victim. And as the jagged pieces slowly fall into place, a frightening picture begins to form: a mind-searing portrait of unimaginable evil that will challenge Decker's and Rina's own beliefs about guilt and innocence and justice.… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member bkladyatl
It has been a long time since I have read a Peter Decker mystery and this one did not disappoint. After a plane crashes into an apartment building, Decker and his detectives investigate a woman whose husband ensists she was on the plane but whose parents don't think so. When none of her remains are
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recovered but a 30 year old body is, Decker has two cases to solve.
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LibraryThing member sharianderson
This book was given to me by my mother and she enjoys this type of fiction. Murder Mysteries and such. I found myself feeling sorry for the main character Peter Decker. He works too much and wants to have a full family life as well.
LibraryThing member readerbynight
The Burnt House was a great read. Decker & Lazarus, long-time working duo of the series quickly become old friends and acquaintances to this first time reader. The book is so well-written, combining police procedure with family life, that I felt completely at home with the characters.

The story
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starts off with a literal BANG!! as a commuter plane crashes into an apartment building. So many twists and turns begin when a search for the remains of one flight attendant
purported to have been on the plane, becomes more complex with the appearance of another
body in the rubble. Police procedure and how their families must cope became more real to me
in this book than similar books I have read in the past. Just when I thought I had it all figured out
(as did the team of investigators), it spun around in a completely different direction. I found the
book at once believable yet surprising, and intricately woven. I am certainly going to search out
more of the many earlier books featuring this duo.
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LibraryThing member TheoClarke
This sixteenth novel in the series about Peter and Rina Decker is marred only by a coincidence that simplifies the plot but is too great to be realistic. There is less material in this book about the Decker family but their few conversations continue the attention to the reader's education about
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Judaism and the final scene is a classic Faye Kellerman description of the wisdom of her heroine.
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LibraryThing member jepeters333
When a mysterious plane crashes, it leaves the charred remains of four unidentified bodies. As LAPD Lieutenant Peter Decker and his wife Rina investigate, they soon must race to unravel crucial clues before something sinister happens to anyone else.
LibraryThing member itchyfeetreader
The 16th Decker novel and the 2nd I have read. An interesting (albiet improbable) plot line involves an unidentifed body found (unearthed?) following a horrific plane crash and a missing stewardess who may or may not have been on the flight. An enjoyable read if not both a little predictable.

the
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interesting part of the Decker series is the lead detective's healthy home life - this is clearly an important part of his character according to Kellerman but felt fairly 1 dimensional to me and as such dissapointed
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LibraryThing member amf0001
The 16th in the Peter Decker series starts with a very dramatic plane crash, and that was very well handled. But then it devolves into a missing person/murder case, and strange things begin to happen. I liked the premise - that not all the people who disappear during catastrophes died as was
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expected. Was the stewardess on the flight? was she murdered? did she run away? and then then find an extra corpse on the plane crash site - from a murder 30 years ago. Kellerman works both these murders and her solution is about fate and unexpected connections. It was okay, but I was expecting something better to flourish from the beginning of this book. Also, Rina is starting to feel a bit cipherish to me, less a real person and more just a perfect religious wife.
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LibraryThing member kimreadthis
Burnt House
by Faye Kellerman
Genre: Mystery
Book #16 in the Peter Decker and Rita Lazarus series
A plane crashes into an apartment building and flight attendant Roseanne Dresden perishes in the crash - or does she?

Plot
A plane crashes. Everyone believes that Roseanne Dresden, a flight attendant, died
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in the crash. Her family thinks her husband Ivan killed her and used the crash to hide the fact. When the plane crashed, it destroyed an apartment building, uncovering a previously dead body identified as Beth Hernandez. Raymond Holmes was Roseanne's boyfriend, and it turns out used to be Belize Hernandez, Manny Hernandez's brother. Manny was married to Beth and they were part of a hippie church. We never fully learn which brother did it, but there was an argument and Beth died. Manny disposed of the body; he took the church's money so he and Belize could go on the lam. Manny purportedly dies soon after in a bar fight; Belize changes his name to Raymond Holmes. Turns out Roseanne was killed by Patricia (aka Marina), Ivan's exotic dancer girlfriend.

Setting
Los Angeles, Burbank, San Jose
modern day

Characters
Peter Decker - detective
Roseanne Dresden - flight attendant, missing, though dead in crash
Isabella (Beth) Hernandez - dead woman discovered in apartment building leveled by crash, cold case
Marge - detective
Oliver - detective
Rina - Peter's wife

Pacing
steady, nice way of adding information and keeping the reader guessing

Narration
third person

=====

Language - strong

Sex - talk of wanting to have sex, prostitutes, cheating, swinging, nothing too explicit

Violence - descriptions of crimes

Homosexuality? none
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LibraryThing member laytonwoman3rd
A disappointment. I've always enjoyed spending time with the Deckers--Kellerman usually provides a nice balance between the police procedural aspects of her story and the personal lives of her characters. Neither element works well in this one. An old crime and a new one are both brought to light
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by a plane crash, and the coincidence that joins them together is just too much. Peter Decker spends most of the book getting on and off airplanes, or trying to calm irate relatives who think they are either being brushed off or harrassed by the police. He's exhausted, and the reader is tired of it. Plot developments seem to happen where the reader is not, later being revealed by one character filling in another on recent findings of the investigation.
On the personal level, the interaction between Peter and Rina is perfunctory, and while I have always respected Rina's faith and commitment to religious observance, in this book she comes across as just plain preachy. Finally, as I often notice in series fiction such as this, The Burnt House shows almost no evidence of editing. I think certain authors become "untouchable" at about the same time they may be getting too comfortable with their recurring characters, which leads to a muddled over-long novel like this one.
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LibraryThing member Bettyb30
This was a good book but a bit drawn out in the middle. They went really indepth in the middle during parts of the book and then flew through the ending. Overall I would recommend this book for others who enjoy a good who done it?!
LibraryThing member gmillar
Call me "soft" but this was my favorite Decker story so far.
LibraryThing member TGPistole
Nicely written. Good character development. Sometimes the double story got a bit confusing.
LibraryThing member jamespurcell
Solid police procedural as Decker and his team work to identify a body found in an apartment building destroyed in a cataclysmic plane crash. Some confusion between the corpse and a missing flight attendant needs to get sorted out with the realization that they are investigating two murders. The
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cast of supporting characters stays interesting with the focus this time on the police rather than the family.
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LibraryThing member Carol420
It all begins with the crash of a small commuter plane out of Burbank (Bob Hope) airport early one morning and the supposed death of an airline steward. When all the victims are accounted for, her body is not identified, although the remains of bones beneath the destroyed structure into which the
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plane plunged are discovered. Thus begins the hunt for the truth behind the disappearance of two women. The skeleton is finally identified as someone gone missing thirty years before. The stewardess' body remains the subject of a continued search. Is the husband somehow responsible for her disappearance or even her possible murder?

I've read Faye Kellerman's Peter Decker series for years. It is without a doubt one of my favorites. This will not disappoint fans of the series or any newbie's starting to read it.
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LibraryThing member niaomiya
I actually think this book is more like a 3.5, but I give it a 4 because of good writing. The good writing, not the plot, is what kept me engaged.

A small commuter plane crashes into an apartment building. Everyone aboard is killed. As authorities comb the wreckage to recover bodies, the body of a
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flight attendant comes up missing. Peter Decker is on the case, investigating the missing flight attendant. Then authorities find a body that has nothing to do with the crash and that looks like it had been under the apartment building for decades.

As Decker investigates both of these cases, his team is sent back and forth from Los Angeles to San Jose to New Mexico as they slowly gather enough details to solve both mysteries.

The story was good but not so engaging that I couldn't put the book down. Faye Kellerman is an excellent writer, and her writing is what elevated this novel despite the lack of character depth. It's possible that the character depth was lacking because it had already been dealt with in previous Decker/Lazarus novels, but it seemed noticeably shallow in this book.

Regardless, I did enjoy this book, just not as much as I usually enjoy Kellerman's books.
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LibraryThing member lbswiener
The Burnt House is a story that is believable. It illustrates the hard work and research of the police to be able to solve a crime with basically no clues. The Burnt House received four stars in this very short review and is recommended for a good story..
LibraryThing member kwskultety
Once again, started out good...then dragged along...I'm reading this out of desperation because I've loaned my Nook to my BFF so she can read the Shades of Grey books....I do have to say that the plot was an interesting one; just not a big fan of how she writes. Time to go back to the library LOL

Awards

Nero Award (Finalist — 2008)

Language

Original language

English

Original publication date

2007-08-07

Physical description

7.01 inches

ISBN

0007243227 / 9780007243228
Page: 0.6537 seconds