(Kellerman, we are told by her publisher, is a dentist, as well as a fencer, a musician and guitar-maker and the mother of three young children.) Other important clues are the result of Decker’s insight into the psychological linkages between arson, bed wetting and child abuse. The crucial detective work is mostly performed by a sexually-aggressive forensic odontologist who manages to identify the body parts of miscellaneous suspects and victims by studying their dental work. In case the reader finds the plot to be too thick, the author provides the frequent narrative summaries: “Did Lindsey ask Cecil to get Chris out of the way so she could run away with Dustin and throw suspicion on Chris?” Kellerman writes in the cursory prose of the ‘commercial’ novelist the plot is mechanical, chugging along efficiently but without significant surprise, and periodically erupting into shoot-outs that are more than faintly reminiscent of episodic television.

And in case the relentless irony is too elusive, Kellerman pauses to observe of Decker: “One minute he was a spiritual being, praying, seeking a higher order in his life the next, knee deep in scum.He was living in two worlds.”Īs a thriller, “Sacred and Profane” is no better and no worse than the bulk of the genre.

Blessed art Thou, Oh Lord, who has made a distinction between sacred and profane”), and on the next page, we encounter a graphic but utterly gratuitous description of intercourse. Thus, we are presented again and again with unsubtle juxtapositions-for example, we are invited to read a fragment of Hebrew liturgy (“Baruch atah Adonei. Kellerman adopts a tone of heavy-handed irony to express the contrast between the mean streets of Los Angeles, where Decker finds himself at war with both evil and self-doubt, and the serenity that prevails in the grounds of a yeshiva where Rina and her two young sons live. While the affair of the heart between Rina, the exquisite young widow, and Decker, the rugged street cop, is refined and circumspect and (mostly) spiritual, the author forces herself to describe every revolting detail of the prostitution and pornography ring that Decker pursues after stumbling across the charred remains of two of its victims.

Sacred and Profane by Faye Kellerman