BLINDMAN’S BLUFF

A cop’s wife IDs a suspect.

Nothing is routine for Rina Lazarus, not even a call to jury duty. Even though husband Peter Decker is with the LAPD, she’s impaneled anyway. During a lunch break the court translator, who’s blind, asks Rina to describe two men he’s been eavesdropping on. The pair have just admitted knowing details about L.A.’s newest high-profile case, the slaying of real-estate developer Guy Kaffey, his wife, their private security guards and their maid. One Kaffey son was left for dead but survives, while the other, along with Guy’s brother Mace, flies in from the East Coast, where they’re overseeing a project that’s hemorrhaging money. Clues lead Peter to the notorious Bodega 12th Street gang and the body of yet another security guard. Meanwhile, Rina leafs through books of mug shots, the translator makes a pest of himself at the station house and Kaffey family embezzlements come to light. There will be further attempts on the remaining Kaffeys—and on Peter, Rina and the translator—before the City of Angels settles down once more.

Kellerman (The Garden of Eden, 2006, etc.), who seems as fond of plot coincidences as she is of Judaica, has settled into a comfortable storytelling groove that’s likely to please her legion of fans without winning her many new ones.