Thrilling and Atmospheric: Read our Review of The Lost Boys by Faye Kellerman

The woods hide many secrets…

When Bertram Lanz, a developmentally disabled man, goes missing from a local diner near the small town of Greenbury, detective Peter Decker is put on the case. Very quickly, he realizes there is more to the disappearance than meets the eye when he discovers Lanz’s nurse is missing too, and blood is found in her house.

Then, while combing the woods, searchers discover the remains of one of three young men who vanished during a camping trip years before.

Meanwhile, Decker’s personal problems are building up too. After a ten-year absence, the biological mother of Decker and Rina’s foster son, Gabriel, has returned, wreaking emotional havoc on the young man.

Juggling a hot case and a cold case, as well as the personal and the professional, Decker races to find justice for the families involved. But as the search for Bertram and the campers’ missing remains continue, Decker is forced to question whether the woods will ever give up their dark secrets… and if these intertwining cases will ever be solved.

The Lost Boys is the latest thrilling addition in New York Times bestselling author Faye Kellerman’s hugely popular Decker/Lazarus series. It’s also the twenty-sixth instalment in the series, but don’t let this scare you off – this gripping and suspenseful read can definitely be read as a standalone.

It’s interesting to see how this series has shifted and changed over the years – and the characters with it. We first met Decker and his wife Rina in The Ritual Bath, released in 1986, where he worked as one of the top detectives in the LAPD. Now, decades later, and approaching seventy, Decker has retired from big-city life and has taken up a post in a sleepy little college town in Upstate New York. What starts as a simple missing persons case soon becomes a far more complicated mystery for the seasoned detective – the type he thought he’d left behind in LA…

After all these years, it’s easy to see why this series is still going strong – The Lost Boys is a tightly plotted and propulsive mystery, packed with unexpected twists and turns that build to a surprising and shocking end.

For existing readers, this latest instalment will not disappoint, and it was certainly a delight to catch up with Decker, Rina and all the other characters I’ve come to love. For new readers, The Lost Boys is a gripping and atmospheric page-turner. And don’t worry if you race through it – you can always catch up on the previous twenty-five entries while you await the next instalment.