WestAir commuter flight from Burbank to San Jose, California, crashes and burns soon after takeoff. A large part of the fuselage lands on an apartment building in the West Valley turning the building into an inferno. Los Angeles Police Department Lieutenant Peter Decker immediately heads to the site to assist in disaster response. Identifying all the victims both on the plane and on the ground will be a lengthy and difficult process.

A month and a half after the crash, Decker receives a call from Farley Lodestone in Fresno. He insists that his stepdaughter is missing. Roseanne Dresden, a flight attendant with WestAir, was listed as being on the fatal flight, but Lodestone and his wife, Shareen, Roseanne’s mother, refuse to believe the newspaper account. They are convinced that Ivan Dresden, Roseanne’s husband, a broker with Merrill Lynch is (as Farley terms him) “the sumbitch” who killed her.

Decker points out that the recovery of bodies has not yet been completed, that Roseanne’s body might still be in the wreckage. The Lodestones tell him that WestAir had not issued a ticket to her. There is, however, a possibility that she was flying without a ticket to work a flight out of San Jose. WestAir has refused to give them any information. Farley and Shareen insist something “fishy” is going on. Decker urges patience but promises to look into their concerns. Decker might have been able to ignore Farley’s demands, but he is impressed with Shareen’s sincerity. He asks Marge Dunn, his former partner, now a police sergeant and single mother, to look into it.

Farley Lodestone is not a man to be discouraged by calls for patience. Eventually, however, a woman’s body is discovered in the bottom of the wreckage; this must be Roseanne’s. The results of the autopsy bring unexpected complications.

Kellerman’s Decker/Lazarus books have always integrated the family’s Orthodox Jewish home life with the whodunit. In The Burnt House, Decker racks up loads of overtime while life on the home front goes on without him. In fact, Marge Dunn’s relationship with her adopted daughter gets more vivid treatment. The police procedural plot with some cutting edge technology thrown in for good measure receives the most attention. Until that unbelievable coincidence kicks in, that is.

Read it for the whodunit, but be prepared for a disappointing twist.

--Lesley Dunlap