The second collaboration by bestsellers Jonathan and Faye Kellerman (after Double Homicide
) offers two thin novellas that dedicated fans will most appreciate. In the first, My Sister's Keeper
, Faye Kellerman's LAPD detective Peter Decker makes an extended cameo role in an inquiry into the murder of an activist lesbian California state representative, Davida Grayson. Grayson, who was the focus of threats from politicians and members of the radical right opposed to her support for stem-cell research, is found shot to death in her Berkeley office; an uninspired pair of local police find that the dead woman's personal relationships, rather than her politics, may have motivated the killer. The second story, Music City Breakdown
, gives Jonathan Kellerman's consulting psychologist, Alex Delaware, a little more to do after Nashville detectives probing the stabbing murder of recording artist Jack Jeffries learn that Delaware had been treating the dead man. The solution is as unsurprising as that of My Sister's Keeper
. (Nov. 21)
