Bone Box

When Faye Kellerman wrote Murder 101, I said that it was probably a good thing that she didn't make Peter Decker's daughter Cindy the new lead of the series because the West Coast native would probably put Philadelphia neighborhoods in the wrong places and that it would make  me angry.  I was right.  No, Ms. Kellerman, a cop and a medical student would NOT live near Rittenhouse Square, and even in University City (which I think you described) they probably wouldn't have a 3 bedroom apartment.  Cindy wouldn't drive to the Roundhouse from Rittenhouse Square or West Philly - traffic and parking prices are both insane and we have SEPTA.  Oh, and you can't leave suburban Cleveland around 11 am and get to Philadelphia before 5.  Getting from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia in under six hours is only possible if you don't stop to pee and don't encounter a construction zone (and there's always a construction zone).

Ms. Kellerman, these are not obscure facts.  A simple check on Zillow for "Rittenhouse Square" and on Google for "drive time between Cleveland and Philadelphia" would have fixed your draft.

I wish geographic errors were my only problems with Bone Box.  I've enjoyed Faye Kellerman's Peter Decker/Rina Lazarus series, but it's a weak, disorganized entry.  It starts well, with Rina literally stumbling across a partially buried skeleton while on a nature hike.  The bones belong to a former student at one of the Five Colleges Consortium, a young man who'd dropped out of one of the colleges to work in finance and had started to transition to being a woman.  Decker and McAdams link this death to another one, and possibly to a pair of related and intermarried couples on the faculties of four of the colleges.  If this sounds improbable, it is.  Kellerman used a similar theme in The Theory of Death, and making it more complex only made it less believable.  Her ventures into the LGBTQ community also felt a bit off, although as an outsider, I can't say anything more specific that the LGBTQ people portrayed didn't feel like real people.  That happens sometimes with minor characters, but the mystery's main victim should be a bit more fleshed out.  I enjoyed parts of Bone Box (the interplay between Decker and McAdams, plus a guest visit by Decker's former partner Marge Dunn), but I'm beginning to question Kellerman's decision to both move Decker to the East Coast and to keep him as an active police detective.  As much as I like her books,  maybe she should have ended the series with Decker's retirement.