Peter Decker Books in Order
Part ofFaye Kellerman Books in OrderBrowse the Peter Decker crime novels by Faye Kellerman in order, with plot summaries, series background, and advice on the best place to start reading.
Last updated: December 22, 2025
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Publication Order
27 books
The Hunt
by Faye Kellerman
2022
A body in the Greenbury woods links back to an old missing‑person case just as Gabe’s biological mother flees to Los Angeles with her children and is viciously attacked. When the kids are kidnapped, Decker, Rina, Gabe, and dangerous hit man Christopher Donatti form an uneasy alliance to get them back.
The Lost Boys
by Faye Kellerman
2021
During a field trip, cognitively disabled Bertram Lanz vanishes from a diner near Greenbury, sparking a massive search. As Decker and McAdams investigate Bertram’s relationships and a missing nurse from his care home, searchers uncover human remains tied to three campers who disappeared years earlier.
Walking Shadows
by Faye Kellerman
2018
In Greenbury, Decker investigates the bludgeoning of twenty‑six‑year‑old Brady Neil, a quiet electronics clerk with a notorious family name. When one of Brady’s friends disappears and blood is found at his home, the trail leads back to a decades‑old jewelry‑store murder and police secrets long buried.
Bone Box
by Faye Kellerman
2017
On a morning hike in the woods near campus, Rina Decker steps on a human skull. The discovery leads Decker and McAdams to a missing student, then to more bodies buried nearby. Their hunt for a long‑active killer snakes through the Five Colleges, old scandals, and carefully guarded academic reputations.
The Theory of Death
by Faye Kellerman
2015
The apparent suicide of a gifted math student near an elite college draws Decker and McAdams into the closed world of high‑level theoretical mathematics. As they probe professors, rival prodigies, and old accidents, a second death suggests that academic rivalries may hide something far darker.
Murder 101
by Faye Kellerman
2014
Semi‑retired to the college town of Greenbury, New York, Decker is bored until a cemetery break‑in reveals that priceless Tiffany glass panels have been swapped for forgeries. When a local art student is murdered, he and brash young partner Tyler McAdams uncover a web of art theft and international crime.
The Beast
by Faye Kellerman
2013
Reclusive millionaire Hobart Penny is found murdered in his apartment, his exotic pets—including a Siberian tiger—left roaming. As Decker’s team digs into Penny’s twisted private life and business dealings, Gabe’s fraught romance from Gun Games reaches a dangerous crossroads.
Gun Games
by Faye Kellerman
2011
Now living with Decker and Rina, fifteen‑year‑old piano prodigy Gabe Whitman falls in love with Yasmine, a sheltered Persian Jewish girl. Meanwhile, two apparent teen suicides at an elite prep school draw Decker into a privileged clique whose obsession with guns and dominance turns deadly.
Hangman
by Faye Kellerman
2010
Old friend and doctor Terry McLaughlin asks Decker to mediate with her abusive husband, then vanishes. As Decker worries over Terry’s gifted teenage son Gabe, an unidentified woman is found hanged at a construction site, forcing him to confront the possibility that the two cases are one tragedy.
Blindman's Bluff
by Faye Kellerman
2009
A massacre at the sprawling estate of shopping‑mall magnate Guy Kaffey leaves the mogul, his wife, and their guards dead. As Decker untangles family feuds, business rivalries, and gang connections, Rina’s chance jury‑duty encounter with key witnesses puts her dangerously close to the killers.
The Mercedes Coffin
by Faye Kellerman
2008
Fifteen years after a beloved teacher was found executed in the trunk of his Mercedes, a second victim dies the same way. A tech billionaire offers a fortune to reopen the cold case, pushing Decker and his team into old police files, Hollywood backrooms, and secrets people would kill to keep buried.
The Burnt House
by Faye Kellerman
2007
When a commuter plane crashes into an apartment building in Los Angeles, Decker must determine whether it was an accident or something worse. Extra, unidentified bodies in the wreckage and a missing flight attendant turn a public disaster into a deeply personal, decades‑spanning mystery.
Street Dreams
by Faye Kellerman
2003
On patrol in Hollywood, Cindy Decker rescues a newborn left in a dumpster and becomes obsessed with finding the baby’s mother. Her search leads through group homes, street gangs, and a home for the developmentally disabled—and into a risky romance with the Ethiopian Jewish nurse caring for the child.
Stone Kiss
by Faye Kellerman
2002
A panicked call from Peter’s half‑brother, a rabbi in upstate New York, pulls Decker and Rina east to help after a relative is murdered and a teenage niece vanishes. Navigating insular Hasidic enclaves and seedy city streets, Decker uncovers abuse, hypocrisy, and a girl running for her life.
The Forgotten
by Faye Kellerman
2001
After Rina’s storefront synagogue is defaced with swastikas and Holocaust photos, Decker arrests a troubled, wealthy teen. When the boy and his therapist are later found murdered at a survivalist camp, the case forces Decker to confront buried histories, toxic parenting, and dangerous therapy.
Stalker
by Faye Kellerman
2000
Newly minted LAPD officer Cindy Decker is determined to prove herself, juggling a rash of carjackings and a slippery real‑estate swindler. When someone begins breaking into her apartment and sabotaging her car, Cindy realizes she has become prey—and her stalker may be wearing a badge.
Jupiter's Bones
by Faye Kellerman
1999
When famed astrophysicist turned cult leader Emil Ganz—now known as Father Jupiter—is found dead in his compound, Decker must determine whether it’s suicide or murder. Probing the apocalyptic sect’s inner circle forces him to confront fanaticism, power, and danger much closer to home.
Serpent's Tooth
by Faye Kellerman
1997
A former employee storms a fashionable Los Angeles restaurant and opens fire, leaving thirteen dead and dozens wounded. When ballistics suggest a second shooter, Decker follows a trail from country clubs to charity galas, risking his career as powerful players move to shut him down.
Prayers for the Dead
by Faye Kellerman
1996
Brilliant heart surgeon and outspoken religious crusader Azor Sparks is found savagely slain behind a restaurant. As Decker digs into Sparks’s double life—biker weekends, experimental drugs, a fractured family—he uncovers painful connections to Rina and ethical lines no one wants exposed.
Justice
by Faye Kellerman
1995
After a high‑school student is found raped and murdered after prom, suspicion falls on her charismatic boyfriend, the privileged son of an East Coast mobster. Decker secures a confession, but nagging doubts—and the girl’s best friend—force him to question what real justice requires.
Sanctuary
by Faye Kellerman
1994
The murders of an Israeli diamond dealer and his wife in their Los Angeles home send Decker from the city’s jewelry district to New York and Israel. Following missing sons and dirty money, he and Rina navigate both family drama and international intrigue tied to the diamond trade.
Grievous Sin
by Faye Kellerman
1993
As Rina recovers from a difficult childbirth, a newborn vanishes from the hospital nursery and a young nurse disappears. Decker, his partner Marge, and teenage daughter Cindy race to untangle obsessive longings and professional grudges before tragedy becomes permanent.
False Prophet
by Faye Kellerman
1992
When the glamorous owner of an exclusive health spa claims she was beaten and raped, Decker must separate truth from performance. Stolen jewels, a missing memoir, and a web of toxic Hollywood relationships turn a simple assault report into a deeply manipulative mystery.
Day of Atonement
by Faye Kellerman
1991
On what should be a peaceful honeymoon visit to Rina’s family in Brooklyn, Decker is pulled into the frantic search for a teenage boy who has vanished from his strict Orthodox home. The hunt stretches across the country and exposes festering secrets in both families.
Milk and Honey
by Faye Kellerman
1990
Driving home late one night, Peter Decker finds a toddler in blood‑soaked pajamas wandering alone. Searching for the child’s family pulls him into a tangle of missing persons, custody battles, and violence that reaches from quiet suburbs to the heart of his own religious community.
Sacred and Profane
by Faye Kellerman
1987
Taking Rina Lazarus’s young sons on a camping trip, Peter Decker’s retreat ends when one boy stumbles onto two burned skeletons. The investigation drags Decker from family life and religious study back into Los Angeles’s darker corners and forces him to re‑examine his future with Rina.
The Ritual Bath
by Faye Kellerman
1986
At a secluded yeshiva outside Los Angeles, a woman is raped near the ritual bath, drawing LAPD detective Peter Decker into an insular Orthodox community. As he hunts a predator and juggles another rape case, Decker’s bond with teacher Rina Lazarus complicates everything.
Series background & context
The Peter Decker novels track the life and work of an LAPD cop who grows into a seasoned detective, a husband, a father, and eventually a small‑town investigator who can’t quite leave big cases behind. At their core, these books are police procedurals, but they’re just as interested in what happens around the kitchen table as they are in the squad room.
When readers first meet Peter in The Ritual Bath, he’s a red‑headed homicide detective raised as a Southern Baptist by his adoptive parents in Florida. A rape at a mikvah on the grounds of a Los Angeles yeshiva brings him into contact with Rina Lazarus, a young Orthodox widow who teaches at the school. The case forces Peter into a world whose customs and beliefs are foreign to him, and that culture clash becomes one of the series’ defining threads.
As the books continue, Peter’s professional life in the LAPD runs alongside his complicated personal life. He learns that his birth parents were Jewish and slowly returns to those roots, eventually becoming an observant Jew himself. He marries Rina, becomes stepfather to her two sons from her first marriage, and tries to stay connected to his own daughter, Cindy, from his earlier marriage. Major cases—serial rapes, mass shootings, cult deaths, medical scandals—play out against this constantly shifting family backdrop.
The series spends a lot of time on the nuts and bolts of police work. Peter leans on his partners and colleagues, especially Detective Marge Dunn and, later, his fiercely independent daughter Cindy as she joins the force. Cases take months, politics get in the way, and bad decisions have consequences that last for several books. The Jewish holidays, neighborhood gossip, and school dramas that fill the Decker home give the stories a lived‑in rhythm that balances the violence of the crimes.
About two decades into the series, Peter retires from the LAPD and moves with Rina to Greenbury, a quiet college town in upstate New York. The crimes there look different—a stolen set of Tiffany panels, bodies turning up near elite campuses, long‑buried skeletons in the woods—but the basic tensions remain. Peter’s experience clashes with small‑town expectations, and his partnership with young, sharp‑tongued detective Tyler McAdams gives the later books a new energy.
Taken together, the Peter Decker novels follow one man as he navigates changing cities, departments, and family roles without losing his sense of responsibility. This page focuses on his side of the story: the investigations he leads, the partners he relies on, and the way each case reshapes the kind of cop—and person—he wants to be.
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