Milk and Honey

Milk and Honey (1990) Faye Kellerman

The third Peter Decker and Rina Lazarus mystery.

Decker is heading home when he finds an abandoned toddler wandering around in the middle of the night. The child’s clothing is stained with blood, but the child herself is unharmed.

(F)or some reason, he felt obligated to the little girl. Change a diaper, the kid owns you for life, he laughed to himself.

This is the major of the three stories winding through the book–the found child, another lost child, and a friend of Peter’s who is accused of a violent rape.

One of the bizarre things about reading books set in the 80s and 90s is how some things have changed so completely in the world. For instance:

She knew they had to move, that they were blocking the path of people deplaning.

That is a completely different would from the one in which we now live, making the story seem much much further in the past than it is (even more so, really, than the common occurrence of pay phones).

Same for this:

A wooden file-holder was nailed onto the outside of the door, and in it was Myra’s chart. Decker looked over his shoulder, then lifted the chart and quickly peered through the medical findings.

Another foreign thing is that PTSD is still something about which nobody talks, even though opinions have changed about those who fought in Vietnam.

“You get angry, I get angry, everyone gets angry. What you seem to be talking about”— The Rabbi spoke in a crisp, accented voice—“ is extraordinary anger, which I suspect has something to do with your war experiences, otherwise why would you bring that up in the first place?”

It seems odd to have to explain the concept of post traumatic stress disorder as something unknown and strange.

Anachronisms aside, I did enjoy the story, and I very much appreciated seeing Peter slowly work through his demons.
Rating: 7.5/10

Published by William Morrow

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