Sacred and Profane by Faye Kellerman

I'm not sure I remembered much about the first book, except that I learned about the mikvah. I didn't remember this one at all. The fact that I knew that Decker's teen hooker informant was wearing a red shirt can't count, because it was inevitable. Did that expression really enter the vernacular from Star Trek? I'll have to look that up. (Yep, it did - the sports usage is apparently completely unconnected.)

The crime here is significantly gruesome, I am tempted to compare it to Elizabeth George for the convoluted horror of it all. In this one, though, the horror is compounded by the fact that Rina's son discovers the first bodies while on an outing with Decker. Their relationship spirals out of control, although not directly as a result of the boys' trauma, and the book ends with Rina leaving LA and going to New York, not so much to be near her dead husband's family as to get some actual distance between the two of them. At least Kellerman doesn't leave us completely hanging - it is quite clear that they will get it together eventually.

The venue of the crime is the lowest and most horrifying level of the pornography business. And the part that I could almost rubber stamp into my discussions of mystery stories - greed and arrogance.

And the title. The text arises from Decker's study of the Torah, and is tied to his struggle with the idea of becoming what these books refer to as a "Torah Jew." Apparently, this is not connected with the super-orthodox, but more with what might be called "fundamentalism" - although I am sure that the oblique association with self-styled "fundamentalist" Christians is sure to offend everyone. It is not the same, at all - but the word in direct interpretation seems to apply. As I understand the tenets of the system to which Rina and the venerable Rav Shulman subscribe, they strive to live as directed by the Torah - completely. On the other side of the wall, so-called fundamentalist Christians (I seem to be incapable of writing that phrase without a qualifier), rather than studying and striving to live by scripture, have interpreted scripture to suit their own prejudices and want to dictate belief and behavior to everyone else. To finish offending everyone, it seems that Torah Jews, according to Kellerman, try to actually do what the "Christian Right" claims to do.

If someone burns a cross in my yard, I suppose I will know that someone actually reads this.