The Beast by Faye Kellerman

The Beast by Faye Kellerman

The professional and the personal intersect in treacherous ways in this compelling and eerie installment in Faye Kellerman's thrilling New York Times bestselling Decker/Lazarus series

Throughout his years with the LAPD, Peter Decker has handled a number of tough cases and strange killers. But few of his previous assignments compare to his latest case--the most bizarre of his storied career.

When Hobart Penny is found dead in his apartment, the cops think that his pet cat--an adult female tiger--attacked the reclusive elderly billionaire. But it soon becomes clear that the beast that killed the eccentric inventor is all too human. Digging into the victim's life, Decker and his colleagues, Detectives Marge Dunn and Scott Oliver, discover that Penny was an exceptionally peculiar man with exotic tastes, including kinky sex with call girls.

Following a trail of clues that leads from a wildlife sanctuary in the San Bernardino Mountains to the wild nightlife of Las Vegas, the LAPD detectives are left juggling too many suspects and too few answers. To break open a case involving the two most primal instincts--sex and murder--Decker wrestles with a difficult choice. Should he turn to a man with expert knowledge of both, Chris Donatti, the dangerous man who also happens to be the father of Decker's foster son, Gabriel Whitman, a boy not without his own problems?

As their work and intimate worlds collide, Decker and his wife, Rina, find themselves facing tough questions. It just might be that family crises and work-related responsibilities prove too much for Decker's career. A confluence of ordeals can stress even the most intact of families. And when all these shocking truths comes out, exactly how well will Decker and Rina cope, and survive?

Faye Kellerman is the author of the #1 Peter Decker/Rina Lazarus series, Moon Music, a New York Times bestselling thriller, and The Quality of Mercy, a historical fiction. The Ritual Bath, her first novel, won the Macavity Award for Best First Novel. Her books are currently in print in over twenty million copies around the world. She has also published several collections of short stories that have received critical acclaim. With her husband, Jonathan Kellerman, and their children, she splits her time between Los Angeles and Santa Fe.