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THE RITUAL BATH
by Faye Kellerman
Avon, June 2007
384 pages
$7.99
ISBN: 0380732661


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Rina Lazarus is a young, orthodox Jewish widow who works in an enclosed yeshiva community as a teacher and she runs the mikvah, the place where religious Jewish women go to cleanse themselves according to Jewish law. One night she is working late and she sees the last woman off after her visit to the mikvah. A few minutes later she hears screams and goes out to find the woman raped and terrified. She calls the police.

Peter Decker is a detective with the LAPD. His latest case has to do with the Foothill rapist, and when he is called to the Jewish community there are ideas that the rape at the mikvah might be related to it. Yet when Peter tries to get information, the Jewish community doesn't talk to him and treats him with distrust. All except one woman, Rina Lazarus. Even though he learns that it is forbidden for an orthodox woman to be friendly with an outsider, Peter finds that he is attracted to her – and that she is attracted to him.

Because he doesn't get much help he doesn't have enough information on which to make an arrest, but Peter is still on the case, looking into the background of any man who is involved with the yeshiva who might be the rapist. Late one night, Rina starts to hear strange noises and she feels that she isn't safe so she calls upon Peter for help and the two get even closer. Little by little Peter starts to think that the rapist in the Jewish community might be aimed at one specific woman – and that woman is Rina!

THE RITUAL BATH is the first in the fine Peter Decker and Rina Lazarus series. It was to become the first in a very successful series that is still on-going today with a new installment just published. Happily all of the series is now being reprinted in mass-market paperback, so new readers can become familiar with it.

There's a reason this series has become so successful – it has all the qualities of a first-rate mystery on top of being a well-written book. There are no loose ends that aren't tied up, the solution to the crime makes sense and is solid. The police investigation is played out well and the readers are privy to all of the clues that come up. There are moments of real tension along with quiet and thoughtful passages where we get to learn a lot about the inner thoughts of the two leads.

Writer Faye Kellerman also adds just the right amount of secondary characters who are all well-rounded real people. The writing is well paced and the reader can't help but just continue going through the story with no thought to putting it down.

But the real reason this series has become so popular is that the relationship that forms between the two main characters never falls into the clichés that would make it into a romance novel. The differences between Peter and Rina, dealing with the religious aspect of the story and with Peter's family background, lets this series pull itself up out of sentimentality and into the real world.

The readers also get to learn a great deal about orthodox Judaism, a subject that is not at all well known to most of us, and by doing that the book then opens itself up to the issue of how we all deal with living in the modern world and how religion can play a part in that life.

Unfortunately, the book does overdo it in describing Rina as extremely beautiful and Peter as outlandishly handsome, but that over-enthusiasm can be forgiven in the first of a series. I suppose Kellerman figured that the leads had to be spectacular in a new series to interest the readers. But happily the leads are also well-rounded, thinking people whose sense of humor and character flaws makes them likable in an everyday sense.

THE RITUAL BATH is the first of an outstanding series and it stands well on its own too. Since all of the series is reissued it would be worth the time to collect and read all of them.

Reviewed by A. L. Katz, August 2007

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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