My least fav in the Decker/Lazerus series.

I rate it 2.5 stars ( )

Retired from the LAPD to be closer to his kids on the East Coast, Detective Peter Decker is now attached to the Greenbury Police Department but finds just as many felonies in the Five Colleges region of upstate New York. On the whole, the theft of a pair of Tiffany windows from the Bergman family crypt at the local cemetery looks like a professional job. Whoever stole the panels obviously took them one at a time, replacing them with fakes in planning to come back for the winter and spring ones later on. The fakes themselves, however, are amateurish... even Decker, who is in no way an art expert, spots one of them as a li counterfeit before Bergman descendant Ken Sobel and his son-in-law, gallery owner Max Stewart, confirm his suspicions. It’s not at all obvious who pulled off the switch, but it’s practically certain that the forger was Littleton College art student Angeline Moreau. Now it’s going to take the services of a talented "ghost whisperer" to question Angeline, who has been brutally murdered. Decker and his rookie partner, the insufferable Harvard grad Tyler McAdams, turn their attention to identifying her accomplice as Tufts postgraduate, John Latham, but then... he’s murdered also. Throughout the complications that follow.... which includes an intense rivalry among competing art galleries...the unsolved 30-year-old theft of some Russian mosaics...attempts on the two detectives' lives...enemy agents and government officials doing everything in their power to keep everything quiet...the presence of the conceited and clueless McAdams which gives Decker an excuse for explaining everything from simple police procedure to the kiddush blessing of the wine. Yeah...that's way, way, way too much info and this longtime fan of the series, grew aggravated and just wanted the whole thing to end. I love the Decker series...but this one?...not so much. ( )

Murder 101 is a good murder mystery. There is attitude amongst the characters. There are universities and city libraries involved. There is art theft. There is horrible horrible murder with no indication as to who did it. There are even Russians involved. The story easily ties all of the loose ends together to a believable ending. Four stars were awarded in this review. ( )

Decker is back -- predictably a little bored in his retiree job as a small town detective after the LA homicide department. He has a really obnoxious new partner to break in, however, and in doing so (read, doing his job very thoroughly as an example to said partner) discovers an unusual art theft in the local cemetary. This leads to murder and the case quickly escalates from there. I enjoyed it thoroughly -- from the research in the reading rooms to the family stories to the new characters and setting.

I agree that the geography is very weird and more than a little off. It's quite difficult to pinpoint where Greenbury would actually be.

Advance Reader's copy provided by Edelweiss. ( )

Peter Decker and Rina have moved to a idyllic collegiate town in upstate NY. A theft of Tiffany windows from a local mausoleum results in two horrible murders. Peter is teamed with a Harvard grad, who is defying his family's wish for him to enter law school. The kid is obnoxious, but Peter and Rina use their charms to help him mature as they work together to solve the crimes. I liked Faye's return to their large family, which is now closer than in L.A. However, the ending was very poor, the international intrigue pretty silly, and the multiple trips between NY and Boston were unnecessary, especially the exaggerated speed at which they were able to occur. ( )