The Lost Boys: A Decker/Lazarus Novel

In bestseller Kellerman’s so-so 26th novel featuring married couple Peter Decker and Rina Lazarus (after 2018’s Walking Shadows), Decker, a former LAPD detective now with the police in the “sleepy little college town” of Greenbury, N.Y., has two cases to occupy him. First, 35-year-old Bertram Lanz, who’s cognitively disabled, has gone missing from a field trip arranged by his residential facility, and after extensive searches don’t locate him, Decker fears that Lanz could have been abducted. Second, the searchers locate human skeletal remains that may belong to one of three college students who vanished a decade earlier. Lazarus has little to do apart from prepare food and give advice to her family. Drama among the extended family pads the detecting, and banal prose (“Four decades of detective work had taught Decker a thing or two. One of the delights of Missing Persons cases was that they often had happy endings. But sometimes not”) is another minus. This one’s for longtime fans only. (Jan.)