Faye Kellerman


Faye Marder Kellerman is an American writer of mystery novels, in particular the "Peter Decker/Rina Lazarus" series, as well as three nonseries books, The Quality of Mercy, Moon Music, and Straight into Darkness.

Early life

Kellerman was born on July 31, 1952, in St. Louis, Missouri. She attended UCLA, where she earned a Bachelor of Arts in mathematics in 1974. In 1978, she received her doctorate of dental surgery, but she has never practiced dentistry and was a housewife before publishing her first novel. In a 1997 essay, she says she cannot pinpoint the metamorphosis from dentist to writer of detective fiction, but several factors that steered her toward mystery writing were: "a desire for justice, a suspicious nature, an overactive imagination, and of course, a penchant for the bizarre."

Personal life

Kellerman is a practicing Orthodox Jew, as are her husband and son, novelists Jonathan Kellerman and Jesse Kellerman, respectively. Her writing frequently deals with Jewish themes and characters, incorporating them into the framework of the traditional mystery. The Peter Decker books, for example, center on a police detective raised as a Southern Baptist, who returns to his Jewish roots after falling in love with Rina Lazarus, an Orthodox Jew, while investigating a rape that took place near a yeshiva.
The Kellermans are the only married couple ever to appear on the New York Times bestseller list simultaneously. They have four children. Their youngest child, Aliza Kellerman, co-wrote Prism, a young adult novel, with her mother.

Plagiarism lawsuit

In 1999, Kellerman sued the writers of the 1998 film Shakespeare in Love, who she claimed stole the plotline from her 1989 novel The Quality of Mercy, in which Shakespeare romances a Jewish woman who dresses as a man, and attempts to solve a murder. Miramax Films spokesman Andrew Stengel derided the claim, filed in the US District Court six days before the 1999 Academy Awards, as "absurd", and argued that the timing "suggests a publicity stunt". An out-of-court settlement was reached.

The [Peter Decker] and [Rina Lazarus] series

  1. The Ritual Bath
  2. Sacred and Profane
  3. Milk and Honey
  4. Day of Atonement
  5. False Prophet
  6. Grievous Sin
  7. Sanctuary
  8. Justice
  9. Prayers for the Dead
  10. Serpent's Tooth
  11. Jupiter's Bones
  12. Stalker
  13. The Forgotten
  14. Stone Kiss
  15. Street Dreams
  16. The Burnt House
  17. The Mercedes Coffin aka Cold Case
  18. Blindman's Bluff
  19. Hangman
  20. Gun Games aka Blood Games
  21. The Beast aka Predator
  22. Murder 101
  23. The Theory of Death
  24. Bone Box
  25. Walking Shadows
  26. The Lost Boys
  27. ''The Hunt''

    Other novels

  • The Quality of Mercy
  • Moon Music
  • Double Homicide – written with Jonathan Kellerman
  • Straight Into Darkness
  • The Garden of Eden and Other Criminal Delights
  • Capital Crimes – written with Jonathan Kellerman
  • Prism – written with Aliza Kellerman
  • Killing Season
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