Review: Predator

Predator by Faye Kellerman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

After breaking my rule about not plowing through a series back-to-back-to-back with James Patterson's "Private" series, it was refreshing to come back to this series. Mitch Greenberg does such a fabulous job with his consistency in narrating the voices of the main characters, it's like visiting old friends.

In this, the 21st book of the series, several months have passed since the events that took place at the end of the previous book, and Gabriel is back in California from Julliard to testify in Dylan's trial. And of course, all he wants to do is see his girlfriend Yasmine, whose parents have not come around to their relationship.

After opening the book with that plot line, Peter's detectives are called to the scene when reclusive, 89 year old billionaire Hobart Penney is found dead, baffling them at first, because since when does homicide respond to old, dead guys? They do when it turns out the old guy has been murdered. Even more surprising than wondering who would want to murder a reclusive old dude is the fact that Hobart kept a tiger in his apartment as a pet.

Perhaps due to the frustrations I felt over aspects of the "Private" series, or perhaps because enough time passed since I last listened to one of these books that I forgot how much I enjoy this series, I found myself rather entertained with this one: from Gabriel and Yasmine's typical teenage lust and trying to find ways to be together without outright lying to their parents to the twists and turns of the murder case itself, this was probably one of my favorite books in this series.

The murder case had several twists in it with several open questions involving other potential victims who were also potential suspects. There was no shortage of suspects or motives for the detectives to work through! I love the relationship between Marge and Scott and some of their banter had me literally laughing out loud as I drove down the street.

The ending, while fully explained, was a bit disappointing, but I liked that Kellerman wrote it as "so here's what happened. But, wait, there's more!" deciding to have the case solved but with a loose end that the detectives just couldn't set aside without also tying up. As I've mentioned with previous books in both this series and her husband's, I also loved the crossover of characters as Peter consulted (Jonathan's) Alex Delaware to get better insight into Penney's predilections, but I also found it weird since Delaware is a noted child psychologist.

The only thing I didn't like was the foreshadowing of where the series may be heading. While it makes sense that character's lives, as with real life, would change over time, it was still a bit sad to listen to what Faye is setting up for the Deckers, though I am also curious as to what she has in store for them.

**I'm not really sure why the audiobook version is coming up as "Predator"; my copy from the library was "The Beast" with the same yellow cover as all the other editions.***

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