The Peter Decker and Rina Lazarus Series in Order: How to read Faye Kellerman’s books?

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Fictional characters created by Faye Kellerman, Peter Decker, and his Orthodox Jewish wife Rina Lazarus solve crimes together, in their own way. A lieutenant in the LAPD, Decker met Rina Lazarus, a young widow, during an investigation.

After that, they started a family and grew old together from one book to another and, of course, they keep solving crimes. At one point, Decker’s daughter from his first marriage, Cindy, also became a cop and even got to be the star of two books in the series.

How to read The Peter Decker and Rina Lazarus Books in Order?

Every entry in the Peter Decker and Rina Lazarus book series works as a standalone story, but the lives of the different characters evolve from one novel to the other.

1. The Ritual Bath – Detective Peter Decker of the LAPD is stunned when he gets the report. Someone has shattered the sanctuary of a remote yeshiva community in the California hills with an unimaginable crime. One of the women was brutally raped. The crime was called in by Rina Lazarus, and Decker is relieved to discover that she is a calm and intelligent witness.
2. Sacred and Profane – Peter Decker had grown very close to Rina’s young sons, Sammy and Jake, as he had to their mother, and he looked forward to spending a day of his vacation camping with the boys. A nice reprieve from the grueling work of a homicide cop–until Sammy stumbles upon a gruesome sight…
3. Milk and Honey – In the silent pre-dawn city hours, Peter Decker finds a small child, abandoned and covered with blood that is not her own. It is a sobering discovery, and a perplexing one, for nobody in the development where she was found steps forward to claim the little girl.

4. Day of Atonement – Peter Decker never dreamed he’d be spending his honeymoon with his new wife, Rina Lazarus, in an Orthodox Jewish enclave in Brooklyn, New York-or that a terrible event would end it so abruptly. But a boy has vanished from the midst of this close-knit religious community, a troubled youth fleeing the tight bonds and strictures he felt were strangling him.
5. False Prophet – Peter Decker doesn’t know quite what to make of Lilah Brecht. The beautiful, eccentric spa owner and daughter of a faded Hollywood legend, Lilah was beaten, robbed, and raped in her own home-and claims to have psychic powers that enable her to see even more devastating events looming on the horizon.
6. Grievous Sin – The birth of their baby girl has filled Rina Lazarus and her husband, Peter Decker, with joy. But the situation is grim at the hospital, when a respected nurse vanishes along with a newborn from the nursery, Peter and Rina fear for the safety of their own precious child-especially when the missing nurse’s car is found at the bottom of a cliff…

7. Sanctuary – A diamond dealer and his entire family have mysteriously disappeared from their sprawling manor, leaving the estate undisturbed and their valuables untouched. Peter Decker is stumped-faced with a perplexing case riddled with dead ends. Then a second dealer is found murdered in Manhattan…
8. Justice – It’s Prom Night…and the queen is dead. Peter Decker and his wife and Rina have a daughter of their own. So the savage murder of a popular high school girl on prom night strikes home… very hard. The bizarre slaying of a teen leads Decker into the dark heart of an exotic subculture: the seamy, sometimes violent world of So Cal’s rootless, affluent youth.
9. Prayers for the Dead – The brutal murder of Dr. Azor Sparks in an alley behind a restaurant is greeted with public outrage and a demand for swift, sure justice. But the investigation into the well-known surgeon’s death is raising too many questions and providing too few answers for homicide detective Lieutenant Peter Decker.

10. Serpent’s Tooth – A man walks into a trendy Los Angeles restaurant-a disgruntled ex-employee with an automatic weapon-and seconds later, thirteen people are dead and thirty-two more have been wounded. It is a heinous act of mass slaughter that haunts Homicide Detective Peter Decker.
11. Jupiter’s Bones – Preeminent astrophysicist Dr. Emil Euler Ganz vanished without any warning to his family or colleagues, only to reappear fifteen years later as “Father Jupiter,” founder and charismatic leader of the scientific cult the Order of the Rings of God. Now he’s dead-a vial of sleeping pills and an empty bottle of vodka standing near his lifeless body.
12. Stalker – A first-year rookie with the LAPD’s Hollywood Division, Cynthia Decker became a cop against the wishes of her father, Peter Decker. But police work is in her blood, and she’s determined to make it on her own-even now, when her razor-sharp instincts for danger are telling her that something is very wrong…

13. The Forgotten – Rina’s small storefront synagogue has been desecrated with anti-Semitic graffiti. The alleged perpetrator is seventeen-year-old Ernesto Golding, a “rich kid” obsessed with haunting suspicions about the origins of his Polish paternal grandfather. Then Ernesto is found brutally murdered along with his therapist. For Decker and his wife, unraveling the truth behind Ernesto’s violent death becomes more terrifying with each sinister twist.
14. Stone Kiss – In Los Angeles, Peter Decker gets a frantic phone call from his family. A distant relative has been found naked and murdered in a seedy Manhattan hotel room and the last person who may have seen the victim alive, has disappeared. Crazed with worry, the girl’s parents plead for Decker’s help.
15. Street Dreams – While on routine patrol, LAPD Officer Cindy Decker rescues a newborn from an alley Dumpster. But she can’t call it a night until she sees the infant safe in a hospital. Now the hunt is on for the mother.

16. The Burnt House – A small plane carrying forty-seven passengers crashes into an apartment building in Granada Hills, California. Peter Decker and his wife, Rina, areprofoundly shaken by this terrible “accident” that has occurred frighteningly close to their daughter’s school. And an irate call from an unaccounted-for flight attendant’s stepfather further tangles an already twisted mystery.
17. The Mercedes Coffin – Billionaire Genoa Greeves believes the L.A.P.D. should finally solve the fifteen-year-old murder of her favorite teacher, Bennett Little. When a primary investigator in the Little case, now retired, suspiciously commits suicide hours after he and Decker talk, the detective realizes something evil’s connecting the dots in two murders separated by a decade and a half.
18. Blindman’s Bluff – Guy Kaffey thought his wealth could acquire anything- including the best security money can buy. When his family are gunned to death on their vast Butterfly Ranch estate, it’s clear that he was tragically wrong. Lieutenant Peter Decker of the LAPD is given the task of piecing together what happened.

19. Hangman – When LAPD Lieutenant Peter Decker reluctantly agrees to do a big favor for old friend Teresa McLaughlin, he knows that his involvement will bring her sociopathic husband, Chris Donatti, back into his life. But then Terry goes missing and Donatti disappears, leaving their 14-year-old son Gabe behind.
20. Gun Games (also known as Blood Games) – A rash of shocking adolescent suicides at an elite Los Angeles private school is at the heart of this gripping thriller that also focuses on the troubled teen Decker and Lazarus have brought into their home: Gabriel Whitman, the son of a psychopath.
21. The Beast – When the elderly, eccentric billionaire Hobart Penny is found dead in his apartment, the cops think that his pet Bengal tiger must have turned against him. But as Decker and his colleagues, Detectives Marge Dunn and Scott Oliver, dig into the victim’s life, they discover that Penny has all kinds of exotic and kinky tastes. It soon becomes clear that the beast that killed the peculiar inventor is all too human.

22. Murder 101 – Peter Decker and his wife Rina Lazarus are ready to enjoy the quiet beauty of upstate New York. But working for the Greenbury Police Department isn’t as fulfilling as Decker hoped. Just when he thinks he’s made a mistake, Decker is called to his first real crime here–a possible break-in at the local cemetery.
23. The Theory of Death – Former LAPD lieutenant Peter Decker is relishing the quiet and slow pace of his new job with the Greenbury police department. The work is low-stress and engaging, and it’s been almost a year since the last murder in this sleepy upstate New York town. Then the body of a nude man is found deep within the woods, shattering Decker’s peace.
24. Bone Box – On a crisp September morning, while walking a bucolic woodland trail, Rina stumbles upon human remains once buried deep beneath the forest floor. Immediately, she calls her husband, Peter Decker. The body has been interred for years. As Decker and his partner, Tyler McAdams, investigate further, they realize that they’re most likely dealing with a missing student from the nearby Five Colleges of Upstate.

25. Walking Shadows – On a quiet suburban street in upstate Greenbury, New York, the brutally beaten body of a young man is discovered in the woods adjacent to an empty vacation home. Twenty-six-year-old Brady Neil a resident of the neighboring town of Hamilton, had no criminal record, few friends, worked full-time, and attended community college. But as Detective Peter Decker learns, the clean-cut kid is linked to the criminal world.
26. Lost Boys – When Bertram Telemann, a developmentally disabled man, goes missing from a local diner near Greenbury, the entire community of the small upstate New York town volunteers to search the surrounding woods in hopes of finding him. When no trace of the man is found, the disappearance quickly becomes an official missing persons case and is assigned to detectives Peter Decker and his partner Tyler McAdams.
27. The Hunt – Peter and his partner, Detective Tyler McAdams, are thrown into an unsolved case and propelled into action when a body is found in the very woods where a man previously went missing in upstate New York. But that’s not the only crisis that Peter has to deal with. Teresa McLaughlin, the biological mother of Peter and his wife Rina’s foster son, Gabe, has fled to Los Angeles with her two children in tow, hoping to avoid a court injunction amid a messy divorce. But LA is no escape from her problems-she is found by ruthless men and beaten mercilessly. When she wakes, barely conscious, Teresa discovers that both of her children are gone and frantically calls Gabe for help.

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