Stone Kiss

A Peter Decker/Rina Lazarus Novel

By: Faye Kellerman

Narrated by: Dennis Boutsikaris

Length: 5 hrs and 28 mins

Publisher's summary

A brutal homicide three thousand miles away has just shattered the tranquility of Lt. Peter Decker's household. A frantic phone call sends him and his wife, Rina Lazarus, on a plane east to the home of Decker's half-brother, a rabbi whose brother-in-law's naked body was found in a sleazy Manhattan hotel room. Even more disturbing: the dead man's 15-year-old niece - and possibly the last person to see him alive - has disappeared, leaving her family crazed with worry about her safety.

The shocking crime propels Decker onto the streets of a city he hasn't walked in 10 years, into an alien environment where his resources quickly run dry and the desperate hours pass without results. With little recourse, Decker is forced into New York's underbelly, seeking help from amoral souls who consider life as expendable as pocket change.

Obsessed with his mission to find the girl, Decker follows a labyrinthine trail of vile deeds and sinister secrets that threaten to pit brother against brother. Soon he's battling an unregenerate evil that threatens everything he holds dear - including Rina.

©2002 Faye Kellerman (P)2002 Time Warner AudioBooks, a Division of the AOL Time Warner Book Group

Critic reviews

"No one working in the crime genre is better." (Baltimore Sun)
"Kellerman does for the American cop story what P. D. James has done for the British mystery, lifting it beyond genre." (Richmond Times-Dispatch)

Easy and great listen!

Faye Kellerman's series with Rina Lazarus and Peter Decker is one of my favorites. She's already written a lot of them, and I'm worried that the series will have to eventually play itself out!!

This one is right up there w her best -- and the narrator is good, too. It's a gripping,can't-put-it-down plot with her well-known excellent character development. I recommend trying her at least once and see if you don't agree.

I love this series!

Would you consider the audio edition of Stone Kiss to be better than the print version?

I think that you get more of an idea of the characters when you listen to an audio book, even tho it is up to the reader how to characterize any of the characters in the book.

Who was your favorite character and why?

I'm really getting into the relationship of Cynthia and her new romance.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

I am still reading the book but I love how the author has the plot twist an turn and weaving in different aspects of the plot.

totally bummed it is abridged!

I didn't even realize that some of the books on the site are abridged -- I completely overlooked that information. And these novels are already short -- why abridge it??? And then you leave me without an audio copy that is unabridged too. I am sorry I wasted my money on this book, and am waiting for another version before moving on in the series.

Poorly read and weak writing

Would you ever listen to anything by Faye Kellerman again?

I love Faye Kellerman this series, but this book is not well written and not well read. It was disappointing.

How did the narrator detract from the book?

The narrator read badly, didn't differentiate between the characters and did not know anything about how to pronounce the words in Hebrew or Yiddish. The other books are so well read and this was just awful.

What reaction did this book spark in you? Anger, sadness, disappointment?

Disappointment in Faye Kellerman and the reader.

First-rate Novel Lost in the Narration

The novel is a gem (worthy of at least four stars) but the narrator struggles with Hebrew--his gutteral /kh/ works only a parody; his Yiddish is incomprehensible at best, outrageously wrong at worst; his rendition of Jewish-American colloquial English is not much better. This audiobook is all but unlistenable by at least a significant subset of Kellerman's target audience. Were it, say, French or Spanish that was so mangled, the publisher would never have released this vocal shambles. Recommended only to those with a stone ear.