It had been a quiet summer for the Greenbury Police Department, a semi-retired Detective Peter Decker was enjoying the respite, a welcome change from his previous post in Los Angeles. It was not to last, when his wife Rina while hiking, stepped on dried up bones. Human bones. Someone had been murdered and buried in the quiet college town, and when two more skeletons are found, and two women go missing, Decker fears there might have a serial killer on the loose. The murders are a few years old, working cold cases is never easy, and Decker and his young intern, Tyler McAdams, have their hands full.

As one of my top go-to authors for dependable, exciting, and solid murder mysteries, Kellerman she has done it again. I've been a fan of the Deckers for a long time, probably because of their rarity in fiction: they're Jewish, empty-nesters; Peter is around sixty years old, but he hasn't mellowed out, although his bones ache once in a while. He always comes off as the real thing: not a superhero but as I imagine a real detective. His age is a source of teasing for Tyler, who is still a law student, and their banter and teasing was good for a few laughs; they complement each other perfectly. Ms. Kellerman weaves the events in the Decker family so skilfully in the narrative, that it never interferes with the police story; they are such a wonderfully interesting family.

Faye Kellerman has mastered the art of writing efficiently with surprising eloquence: every detail is sharply defined, and every character impeccably fleshed out. BONE BOX is an absorbing mystery where the characters' strong personalities define the story. Decker and Tyler search for the common threads, and the more they learn, the more confounding it all is, as the straight lines become crisscrossing serpentines. Faye Kellerman has crafted an exceptionally complex mystery, with so many layers, and what is most astonishing is that the denouement unravels as brilliantly as the build-up was carefully engineered. With every book, I always hope that Peter Decker will never retire!