The Burnt House Faye Kellerman

A commuter plane crashes into an apartment building. All officers that are available to help are called to the site, including Lieutenant Peter Decker. It takes months to shift through the wreckage and try to piece together what had happened and also to account for all those that were on the flight.
One person who was listed as one of the dead was flight attendant Roseanne Dresden. But her parents swear she wasn’t on the plane and her body had never been recovered. Decker looks into this and everyone is relieved when a female body is discovered at the bottom of the wreckage site. The remains have to be the unaccounted for Roseanne, right?
This is my first Faye Kellerman book and all I can say is it won’t be my last. Upon finishing this book I immediately hopped on line and order a few more from her Peter Decker series.
I really enjoyed this book. The plot was intriguing and the twists and turns were believable. The characters were all likeable, and while Decker is the main character, the story wasn’t told strictly from his view point. Other detectives were involved and we got to get a feel for Decker’s family.
I read a lot of mystery books. This is the first one that I’d read that actually goes into some detail about the day to day running of an investigation. And it was this aspect of the book that I enjoyed the most. A lot of time with murder mysteries, you get the feeling that the lead character is simply brilliant at what they do and everything falls into place in the matter of a few days. They get one clue and bam! mystery solved. This is not the case in The Burnt House. While Decker is brilliant at what he does, there is a lot of foot work and team work and waiting around. And for me, this was a very realistic portrayal of police work. I also like that Decker didn’t do it all himself. It took teamwork. His detectives helped break the case. Even his wife had a small part in it. Average people coming together to accomplish extraordinary things.
I highly recommend The Burnt House.