The Hunt – Faye Kellerman

Gotta love when a scheduling error causes all kinds of delays on your post going live (this is why I need to use the calendar as opposed to typing in the dates). This released on August 23rd and I had finished it up on the 24th!

Thanks to William Morrow for the gifted copy in exchange for my honest review

THE HUNT – Faye Kellerman (Released August 23rd, 2022)

Book Description:

Detective Peter Decker and Rina Lazarus return to Los Angeles when a kidnapping hits close to home—in this breathtaking new thriller from New York Times bestselling author Faye Kellerman.

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.

With his mother on the verge of death, Gabe contacts Peter and Rina, as well as his biological father, the notorious Christopher Donatti, a former hit man from a known criminal family who’s now a millionaire in Nevada. By bringing Donatti into the fray, Gabe, Peter, and Rina know they have made a deal with the devil—but they may not be able to recover the kids without him.

As these unlikely allies rally to find the kidnappers before things end tragically, they race headlong toward an explosive confrontation from which no one will emerge unscathed…

My Thoughts: 3.5/5 stars

This was my introduction to Faye Kellerman and after finding out that THE HUNT is actually book 27 in this Peter Decker/Rina Lazarus series I was concerned that I might be missing out on a ton of information. That’s one thing I’ve grown to love about crime fiction series, yes it’s always better to start from the beginning of the series and be able to fully appreciate the character growth, but you won’t have any issues starting in the middle and being able to follow along. After seeing some other reviews, this is supposedly the last book in the series, and I find it pretty funny I’m starting at the end, but this is a series I want to start from the beginning with.

Murder, kidnapping, trying to evade court in a messy divorce, and that’s not even all of it. Certainly seems like there is going to be a lot going on in this book, but I feel like Kellerman was able to effortlessly weave all of these elements together without losing the readers or causing too much confusion. From what I’ve seen from other readers, there is a lot of backstory with some of these characters that would be beneficial to already know and a cast of characters that are coming back from previous installments. I feel like I would have been able to appreciate these cameos and inclusions better, but it didn’t take away from the events in the book.

While there was plenty of drama and suspense to go around, I feel that there were some parts that didn’t need to be in such graphic detail. A good warning before starting this, is that there is a lot of graphic and violent sexual parts in the book, so if that’s something you want to avoid then this might not be the book for you. Seeing other reviews, this seems to be an outlier in the series. Overall, I really did enjoy the book and the pacing was nice and quick. A solid introduction to this author and a new series for me. I can’t wait to get to know Peter and Rina better!