What do You think about Serpent's Tooth (1998)?
# 10 in the Decker series. Comfort reads between some serious and action-packed stuff like Nesbø....Decker and his team investigate the massacre that occurred when a fired employee did a killing spree in the restaurant he used to work at. A bunch of small details don't match, as if there were two guns or two gunmen instead of just one killer. So off they go to find out who's behind it all and why.Usually I love the characters introduced in the series. But in this one they didn't seem as new or original as they have been in other books in the series. And there didn't seem to be as many twists and turns as there usually is in the series - or am I just getting totally spoiled by Harry Hole series?
—Anna
Though not her strongest offering, Serpent's Tooth isn't the weakest Decker novel either. The book has an excellent opening. Kellerman makes you care about a scattered group of people in just a few pages - and then brutally murders a large number of them. The pacing of the story is good despite the ultimate frustration: knowing who the killer is and not being able to prove it. Instead of letting this knowledge (shared by both readers and characters) slow the book down and just make it out-and-out frustrating, the process Decker and his detectives go through to get the evidence they need is interesting enough to hold a reader (or, in my case, a listener). The weakest portion of the book is the end, which comes in a sort of faintly explained deus ex machina - so much so that a character in the novel even comments on it!Kellerman also wove in more family moments with Rina, Cindy, the boys, and Hannah than in a couple of previous books. These moments are what set the Decker books apart from the glut of mystery fiction.
—Rebecca
This is a well written book in the Peter Decker / Rina Lazarus series. Peter is a homicide detective and Rina is his very Orthodox Jewish wife. Peter balances his life in the real gritty world of crime with his desire to live an Orthodox lifestyle with Rina. The contrast plays nicely as Peter is trying to solve a mass murder at a posh restaurant. He hones in his main suspect but can't make any headway between the politics of the high society types and the cunning of his opponent. This is fast paced with well developed characters.
—Peggy
