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If I’ve read any of this Peter Decker Rina Lazarus series in the past, I can’t remember doing so. Again, I’ve rather callously fallen into it somewhere in the middle, but you don’t really need to have read anything prior to this to feel fully involved in it. In fact, this is book 20 in the series, in the event that someone keeps track of such things.
Gabe Whitman has moved in with Peter and Rina in order to finish high school. He’s the gifted son of a troubled friend of Decker and Lazarus, and at 15, he has a lot of free time and maybe not as much supervision as he should have. That said, he’s basically a good kid with an eye firmly set on either Harvard or Julliard in the fall. He practices that piano for hours and hours in preparation for acceptance into one of those schools.
One day, while he’s having an after-school drink at a Starbucks, he is menaced by several students from a nearby private high school. The leader of the group insists that Gabe has taken his seat. But Gabe turns the tables on the leader and avoids getting shot. But from that day on, he chooses to drink his coffee at another establishment, and he goes there early rather than later when the crowds are larger. And that’s where he meets her!
Yasmine is 14 and the daughter of super-strict Iranian Jews. If she even glances twice at Gabe, she runs the risk of dishonoring herself in the eyes of her family. But she can’t help it. She has heard him play, and she sings beautifully. So the two have music as their common bond. Their first meeting blossoms secretly into a forbidden-fruit teen romance that will touch the most jaded and hardened of hearts. In fact, to be truthful, that subplot was my favorite part of the book. That said, I’d have been more comfortable with this if the sex had been toned way, way down and if Yasmine had been older than 14. It felt like soft-core child porn, especially one scene where their first-time efforts at intercourse leaves her crying in pain and tremulously agreeing to allow it to happen again if it won’t hurt so much. Yuck. I stand by my assertion that the teen romance was intriguing in so many ways. The two grow together nicely, and the fact that they must meet secretly ads just a bit of spice to what would otherwise have been just another teen romance.
While Gabe and Yasmine are secretly carving out time for one another, a male student at a high-brow private school takes his life. But his mother refuses to believe his death was self inflicted, and she begs Peter Decker to look into it more deeply. When he does, he finds that the gun used in the apparent suicide was a stolen one. Suddenly, the death looks more like a homicide, and when another student dies in a similar way, the investigation ramps up. What Decker ultimately learns will chill and sicken you. You’ll wonder whatever happened to the days of relative innocence in school replete with cheesy prom decorations in a gym where the basketball hoops have been covered with crepe paper cheap décor. Not so with these rich brat private school kids. Theirs is a life of psychopathic violence that is both stunning and vividly memorable.
And through it all is this wonderful youthful romance of forbidden but unquenchable love between the gifted pianist and the strictly raised Jewish girl who is prepared to put it all on the line to keep the romance alive if at all possible. And, as you may have guessed, there is a heart-stopping point at which the private school violence and the young romantics intersect.
Gabe Whitman has moved in with Peter and Rina in order to finish high school. He’s the gifted son of a troubled friend of Decker and Lazarus, and at 15, he has a lot of free time and maybe not as much supervision as he should have. That said, he’s basically a good kid with an eye firmly set on either Harvard or Julliard in the fall. He practices that piano for hours and hours in preparation for acceptance into one of those schools.
One day, while he’s having an after-school drink at a Starbucks, he is menaced by several students from a nearby private high school. The leader of the group insists that Gabe has taken his seat. But Gabe turns the tables on the leader and avoids getting shot. But from that day on, he chooses to drink his coffee at another establishment, and he goes there early rather than later when the crowds are larger. And that’s where he meets her!
Yasmine is 14 and the daughter of super-strict Iranian Jews. If she even glances twice at Gabe, she runs the risk of dishonoring herself in the eyes of her family. But she can’t help it. She has heard him play, and she sings beautifully. So the two have music as their common bond. Their first meeting blossoms secretly into a forbidden-fruit teen romance that will touch the most jaded and hardened of hearts. In fact, to be truthful, that subplot was my favorite part of the book. That said, I’d have been more comfortable with this if the sex had been toned way, way down and if Yasmine had been older than 14. It felt like soft-core child porn, especially one scene where their first-time efforts at intercourse leaves her crying in pain and tremulously agreeing to allow it to happen again if it won’t hurt so much. Yuck. I stand by my assertion that the teen romance was intriguing in so many ways. The two grow together nicely, and the fact that they must meet secretly ads just a bit of spice to what would otherwise have been just another teen romance.
While Gabe and Yasmine are secretly carving out time for one another, a male student at a high-brow private school takes his life. But his mother refuses to believe his death was self inflicted, and she begs Peter Decker to look into it more deeply. When he does, he finds that the gun used in the apparent suicide was a stolen one. Suddenly, the death looks more like a homicide, and when another student dies in a similar way, the investigation ramps up. What Decker ultimately learns will chill and sicken you. You’ll wonder whatever happened to the days of relative innocence in school replete with cheesy prom decorations in a gym where the basketball hoops have been covered with crepe paper cheap décor. Not so with these rich brat private school kids. Theirs is a life of psychopathic violence that is both stunning and vividly memorable.
And through it all is this wonderful youthful romance of forbidden but unquenchable love between the gifted pianist and the strictly raised Jewish girl who is prepared to put it all on the line to keep the romance alive if at all possible. And, as you may have guessed, there is a heart-stopping point at which the private school violence and the young romantics intersect.