Prayers for The Dead: A Peter Decker/Rina Lazarus Novel

By Faye Kellerman

The brutal murder of Dr. Azor Sparks in an alley behind a restaurant is greeted with public outrage and a demand for swift, sure justice. But the investigation into the well-known surgeon's death is raising too many questions and providing too few answers for homicide detective Lieutenant Peter Decker.

Why, for example, would the family of a man so beloved respond to his slaying with more surprise than grief? And what linked a celebrated doctor with strict fundamentalist beliefs to a gang of outlaw bikers? But the most unsettling connection of all is the one that ties the tormented Sparks family to Peter Decker's own -- and the secrets shared by a renegade Catholic priest...and Decker's wife, Rina Lazarus.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Oct 13, 2009
• ISBN: 9780061842085

Faye Kellerman

Faye Kellerman lives with her husband, New York Times bestselling author Jonathan Kellerman, in Los Angeles, California, and Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Reviews for Prayers for The Dead

[memasmb · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Great book. Lieutenant Peter Decker investigates the grissly murder of a famous heart surgeon, Dr. Azor Sparks. There are so many twists and turns through out the book you are constantly surprised when the whole story is tied together. Even Decker's wife, Rina is part of the saga.

[fantasma_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

As part of the Unread Authors Challenge, I finally picked up this book from my huge TBR pile, 4 years later...It's a nice book, readable, with some good suspense and misteries along the way, but I just felt it dragged for too long, 150 or 200 pages less wouldn't be missed (maybe Mrs Kellerman follows her husband path? - even though he writes better!) and then the end is just soooo rushed, in 30 pages we discover everything, with a "who is he??" bad guy and a "I'm so lucky" find. I thought Cindy was usually a caracter, but I've found out it's her father the main figure in the series.I don't know if I'll read more, with so many good books hanging around...

[lbswiener · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Prayers for the Dead is a book that is difficult to plow through. The plot line can be guessed at the beginning of the story even though the story takes some turns. The characters were believable. The settings were believable. Only three stars were awarded to this review.

[yhgail · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The plot seemed preposterous to me and a bit dated, which is not unreasonable given when it was written.

I was glad to finish the book - as oposed to not finishing it.

A 3 minus.

[5eva5 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A well-known surgeon is murdered without an apparent motive and Decker's investigation gets extra complicated when he finds out that Rina's first husband was a close friend of one of the family-members. There is quite a lot of running around trying to figure out family relations in this one as well as a barrage of theological discussions about the difference between Judaism and Christianity and that gets slightly tedious, but since the mystery is quite puzzling, it's a proper page-turner read.