Rating: 
Summary: Politically correct drivel
Review:
This is one bad book. I read Faye Kellerman years ago, didn't like her, but recently thought I'd try her again. Bad decision. This book is terrible for so many reasons:
1. The cardboard characters: The devout and saint-like Rina and Koby (notice that the more devoted to Orthodox Judaism they are, the more saint-like Kellerman draws them); the overly-sweet father who actually calls his cop-daughter princess. The bland and saint-like half-siblings. All very boring, all very predictable.
2. The heavy-handed focus on political correctness in long-winded discussions of WWII, race relations, Orthodox Judaism, and Israel. These were pure distraction that only interrupted what could have become a solid, fast-paced mystery.
3. The side story about the saint-like Rina's grandmother's murder during WWII. Again, distracting, not interesting, and just plain useless.
I won't buy another Faye Kellerman book. Boring! Where are today's editors?
Rating: 
Summary: New Fan for Kellerman
Review: "Bestseller Kellerman's latest Peter Decker/Rina Lazarus novel (after 2002's Stone Kiss) will please her fans, but is unlikely to make new converts"
I am a new fan of the Kellerman family. I really enjoyed Faye Kellermans writing and am now reading my first book by Jonathan Kellerman, but that's another story. Reading some of the other reviews, I came across this sentence and was quite surprised. I totally disagree because from the start of the book, i was totally captured. The book is written intellegently, yet easy to read. I intend to read more of Faye Kellerman books. My only problem with this book was the ending, I felt that she finished quickly and this took much out of the book.
Rating:
Summary: A mystery enthusiast delight !
Review: 'Sweet Dreams' is a mystery enthusiast (like myself) dream come true. I was engrossed from the start and held spellbound until after I had finished the book. Kellerman is a writer that I truly enjoy!
Rating:
Summary: Decker's Kid Makes Her Street Dreams Come True
Review: Cindy Decker is the daughter of Peter Decker, LA detective supremo. She has graduated from college, and is in her second year on the police force. Following in her father's footsteps is difficult, as is their relationship. The story opens with Cindy finding an abandoned baby in a dumpster. She resuscitates the baby,makes the daily news frontpage and her career takes off.. In the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit she meets the man of her dreams, Kobe. Kobe is Jewish and fits in with her Jewish family-although she does forget to tell her father that Kobe is black. Cindy winds in and out of the mean streets of LA looking for the baby's mom. When mom is found several other mysteries develop. Cindy becomes deeply involved in solving the mysteries, her father's daughter, work helps her to forget her past anxieties. She finds she is spending more and maore time in trying to solve the mysteries and any spare time is spent with her new romance. With the assistance of her father she solves
several of these mysteries and gives credit to her colleagues. A very smart move Cindy and Kobe are very much in love and as the
romance gains speed so do their questions- Kobe is depressed and
Cindy has a tendency to anxiety. Will they be able to beat the
odds? Will Cindy and her father be able to close the gap in
their prelationshi? Faye Kellerman's excellent writing and ability to keep you on the edge without giving away any secrets, has me waiting for her next book. You will become involved in the storyline- read Faye Kellerman's series- you will become
hooked.
Rating: 
Summary: Too much, too slow
Review: Disappointing to say the least. I've read the entire series and this book just doesn't make the cut. Half way through the book I read the last chapter. The story line moves slow, lacks depth and substance and an interesting side-line story gets little coverage (Rina's grandmother). I call these mysteries fluff and escapism which is a nice break for the brain but this book has been a chore to read.
Rating:
Summary: Faye Kellerman never disappoints.
Review: Everytime a new novel by Faye Kellerman becomes available, I am reading it and anticipating the next one. These books are great reads, and Street Dreams is no exception. I love the intertwining of family issues, detective work, and religious traditions. This latest novel was particularly interesting because it deals with racism from a new point of view. Keep writing, Ms. Kellerman. Your books are great.
Rating: 
Summary: Kellerman hasn't lost her touch
Review: Faye Kellerman has a way of causing the reader to care about her characters as well as wondering "who-done-it" in her Peter Decker/Rina Lazarus books. In "Street Dreams", Peter's daughter Cindy takes center stage again, as she did in the earlier book, "Stalker". This time she is a more well-rounded character and is more sympathetic despite her tough demeanor. At the beginning of the book she is called by a man who hears a strange noise coming out of a dumpster. Cindy investigates and finds a newborn baby whom she rescues. She then sets out to find the mother and father of the baby. While doing so, she becomes acquainted with a male neonatal nurse who is destined to have a major role in Cindy's life. During her investigation she is followed and shot at, actions which only increase her street dreams--cops' nightmares of what could really happen to them. She is also a witness to a brutal hit-and-run accident which she feels is related to her search for the baby's parents. A subplot concerns Cindy's step-mother Rina who wants Peter to investigate the murder of her grandmother many years ago during a time of Jewish persecution. Cindy's romance is a classic dance of drawing closer and then moving apart due to miscommunication and misunderstood motives. There are some innuendos in the book which seem to go nowhere, such as Cindy and Peter's uneasy state of mind at the beginning of the book and the dark moods of Cindy's friend Koby. Perhaps this is intentional and Kellerman will develop these strands more fully in later novels. The crimes in this book seem to take a back seat to the personal lives of the characters but that makes this book very readable and does help the character development, particularly with Cindy. Kellerman fans should not be disappointed in this latest entry in the series.
Rating:
Summary: Awesome
Review: Faye Kellerman keeps getting better and better. This most recent book is a marvelous feat. Her characters are likeable and are growing in strength in each new book. Looking forward to the next installment in the Decker adventures.
Rating:
Summary: FAYE KELLERMAN'S 'STREET DREAMS' LIMNS THEMES OF FAITH AND R
Review: FAYE KELLERMAN'S 'STREET DREAMS' LIMNS THEMES OF FAITH AND RACE
by Joe Shea
American Reporter Correspondent(Kellerman, Faye. Street Dreams. New York: Warner Books, 2003. 420 pages. $25.95 ) BRADENTON, Fla. -- Set on the seamy side of Hollywood, Faye Kellerman's latest mysery, 'Street Dreams,"
is an unusual vehicle for themes of Jewish orthodoxy and interracial marriage seasoned by an interesting mysteries
solved and unsolved.
Cindy Decker is an L.A.P.D. patrol officer from a fairly conservative family, Her father is "the Loo," Lt.
Ed Decker, married to his second wife, Rina, who has thoroughly adopted Cindy as her own (Cindy's real mom is
alive and mentioned but not a presence).
For Jewish readers, this book will undoubtedly resonate against the traditional walls of culture and community,
and most of the echoes will be quite pleasant. For non-Jewish fans of Kellerman, the excitement lies in the several
intertwined crimes that Cindy sets out to solve with the reluctant help of her father and homicide detectives who know
him and sometimes resent her.
The interesting complication is ther love interest. Cindy meets an African doctor, Koby, who is from that
small tribe of Ethiopian Jews once known as the Lost Tribe of Israel. While Cindy's stepmother and her father are portrayed as generally accepting the black-and-white relationship, L.A.P.D. officers are portrayed less kindly. That part of the casting is a bit stereotypical and probably counter to real life, in which LAPD officers tend to be far less insular than the people they police.
As a former Hollywood crimefighter, I was a little taken aback by the details; the Hollywood L.A.P.D station
is a much different animal than the book describes, but the gangsters are well-chosen. As for the initial crime, my
neighbors once found an abandoned baby in their Dumpster; it was dead, however. We named him Angel, organized a funeral Mass and buried it at Holy Cross cemetery in a gravesite that was donated by the cemetery.
The development of these themes rather substantially slows down the book, and non-Jewish readers may feel like they are being indoctrinated more than entertained. A lot of the book is concerned with crimes that took place during or just before the Holocaust involving Lt. Decker's mother, who is never convincingly portrayed even as her personal history is examined in detail.
We miss meeting the grandmother as human being while becoming intimate with the her as victim of her mother's murder. But while the murder that Rina enlists her husband to help her solve never is, we do see a convincing flash of humanity when Rina's aged mother meets with German friends from those dark days now living in Solvang, a Danish-themed resort town in the Santa Ynez mountains on California's Central Coast.
And the book doesn't otherwise lack for humanity, because the central crime - the abandonment of a baby
in a Dumpster, traced back to a retarded mother and father who were raped and beaten by Latino gangsters and their gringo friends (no Jewish criminals need apply for roles in this drama) - and the difficult but ultimately successful
love affair between Koby and Cindy have many illuminating moments that tap the author's sense of compassion and
concern.
Frankly, while the book is a rather awkward read and I put it down many times, at least I did finish it. Part
of the time I enjoyed learning a little about the household lives of observant Jews, which are ultimately not very interesrting, and I was very taken with the travails of Koby, Cindy's love interest. This book was published in August 2003, shortly after Koby Bryant's problems arose, so the name is dissonant now. Anyway, his real name Yaakov Kutiel, and he is a Kutie, at least as far as Cindy is concerned.
So is their "meet," which takes place when Cindy takes the baby she's just discobered while on patrol to Mid-City Hospital, where her lover-to-be is a male nurse in critical care neonatology. Tall and handsome, she is instantly
attracted to him. He is also black, and she can tell by his name tag that he may be Jewish, apparently a requirement
of her father and stepmother.
Once they are over the religious issue, they begin to encounter the racial barriers. A former boyfriend who is a homicide detective doesn't like Koby at all and still wants Cindy back; another officer refers to her love interest by asking, "Does the Loo know you're eating chocolate cake?"
The repartee all around may be uncharacteristically genteel, but the story of their relationship is beautifully developed. As her accomplice, Koby helps solve the puzzle of the baby's abandonment and then becomes a target in a drive-by and a car chase. At one point he has no choice but to fire a gun at a pursuing vehicle that has tried to run them down, and then Cindy and her father have to cover up the fact when the discharge of a weapon is investigated by Internal Affairs. It's all rather weird and counter-intuitive, but it works.
The most compelling part of the novel is the slow elaboration of details surrounding the abandonment of the baby,
and then of the rape and beating of the unmarried and retarded parents. It is a tricky process to coax embarrassing
details out of a retarded person - one has become homeless somewhere in Los Angeles - and to penetrate the barriers
thrown up by privacy laws, the pedestrian bureaucracy of a home for the retarded and the family lawyer of one of the
parents, who turns out to be pleasantly rich.
Yet, even when most of the strings are followed to their resolution - something that's rather skillfully done,
given the plot complications - one is left with the question of why this book was written. It's less a mystery than a
love story, and less an exposition of Jewish life than a seminar on the same. I resented much of the exposition,
much enjoyed the romance, was satisfied by the mystery and its solution, but finally left wondering if the author's
reputation has been oversold. Joe Shea is Editor of The American Reporter Book Review. Visit him at http://www.american-reporter.com.
Rating:
Summary: All of Faye Kellerman's Books are Excellent!
Review: I am a huge fan of both Faye and Jonathan Kellerman. I love the Decker/Lazarus series, and this book did not disappoint. While this book focuses more on Cindy than on Peter and Rina, you also get your fill of the rest of the Decker clan. In addition, a new character, Koby, is introduced. I recommend reading this book and anything else written by this excellent author.
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