A series of books by Faye Kellerman.
A rape takes place at the Mikvah (Jewish place for ritual bathing) of a Yeshiva (a Jewish institute for studying Rabbinic literature). Rina Lazarus, a widow with 2 sons, is the operator of the Mikvah; she calls the police. The head of the police team solving the rape happens to be Peter Decker, who was born Jewish but raised Christian and didn't even know he was Jewish until.he was an adult; at the beginning of the series he sees himself as Christian, but the Rav of the Yeshiva causes him to start to consider the fact that he is Jewish, and eventually to "convert". Most of the books are about him, primarily his police work but also his private life, which Rina and her sons become part of. A few books focus more on his daughter from his previous marriage (his ex-wife is Jewish, so his daughter also is), who also becomes a police officer.
Books in the series:
- The Ritual Bath (1986)
- Sacred and Profane (1987)
- Milk and Honey (1990)
- Day of Atonement (1991)
- False Prophet (1992)
- Grievous Sin (1993)
- Sanctuary (1994)
- Justice (1995)
- Prayers for the Dead (1996)
- Serpent's Tooth (1997)
- Jupiter's Bones (1999)
- Stalker (2000)
- The Forgotten (2001)
- Stone Kiss (2002)
- Street Dreams (2003)
- The Burnt House (2007)
- The Mercedes Coffin (2008) also published as Cold Case
- Blindman's Bluff (2009)
- Hangman (2010)
- Gun Games (2011) also published as Blood Games
- The Beast (2013), also published as Predator
- Murder 101 (2014)
- The Theory of Death (2015)
- Bone Box (2017)
- Walking Shadows (2018)
- The Lost Boys (2021)
- The Hunt (2022)
This series provides examples of the following tropes:
- Analogy Backfire: A conversation between Peter and Rina in the second book:
Rina: Nonsense. Rabbi Akiva was forty when he started learning Torah. You've got a good year's jump on him.
Peter: And look where that got him.
Rina: What do you mean?
Peter: Wasn't he one of the ten rabbis who was tortured by the Romans? The one who had his back raked open by hot iron combs?
- Bilingual Bonus: The series has several Hebrew and Yiddish phrases in it.
- Converting for Love: Decker converts to Judaism in order to be with the Rina. An unusual example since as an adult he finds out that he was born to Jewish parents (and thus was already considered a Jew under Jewish law) but he was adopted and raised by Southern Baptists, so it's as much about getting reacquainted with his heritage as this trope.
- Heel–Faith Turn: Shlomo Stein had previously been involved with drug dealing and assault with a deadly weapon. Eventually he became religious again and has not violated any laws since.
- Like Parent, Like Spouse: In the first book, Rina mentions that her mother was less strict about religious rules than her mother. As a result, her older brother married someone less religious, while Rina married someone more religious.
- Mistaken Identity: In the first book, the rapist wanted to get Rina, saw someone who looked like Rina in the dark and attacked her - just to discover it was supposed meone else.
- Outliving One's Offspring: One of the two skeletons found at the beginning of "Sacred and Profane" is identified as Lindsey Bates, whose parents are still alive at the end of the book.
- Serial Rapist: In the first book, the main plot is trying to solve the case of the rape at the Yeshiva. There is a serial rapist (identity also unknown) who has been attacking women in the same general vicinity, and one of the questions asked repeatedly is if it's the same rapist.
- Writers Cannot Do Math: In the first book, Peter is 38 years old and Rina's sons are 8 and 7; in Hangman Peter is 60, so her sons should be 30 and 29, yet they are still in college.
