Kellerman's plots are consistently realistic and at the same time unconventional.

The dialogue that unleashes the action in her novels is terse, uncompromised by the jargon that often impairs the movement of such typical crime scenarios that compete on the mystery-detective market. The impetus for the central action of each novel always stems from the American scene, from family dramas, to the moral vacuity and despair and desperate acts that both define and reflect American culture: domestic violence, women targeted by uncontrollable rage, children as victims of neglect and abuse, gang affiliation, drugs, gratuitous sex, an ever-growing wayward sense of hopelessness, unanchored lives, the pathologies of our age.

In fact, Kellerman captures the drama of American life in the latter part of the 20th century with a recognizable and often chilling intensity and accuracy.

Most of the action takes place in Los Angeles or the surrounding areas (although she does move out into New York and Israel for an occasional foray), and the situations she describes are timely. The narrative conceit and dramatic plots of Kellerman's detective novels alone are compelling evidence of her mastery of the mystery genre. Since the publication of The Ritual Bath, in which Rina Lazarus (at this point in the developing saga, a young widow with two children) assists the police in their investigation of a brutal rape that takes place at the mikvah (the women's ritual bathhouse) in the orthodox community in which she lives, Kellerman has published nine sequential mysteries involving Decker and Lazarus: Sacred and Profane (1987), Milk and Honey (1990), Day of Atonement (1991), False Prophet (1992), Grievous Sin (1993), Sanctuary (1994), Justice (1995), Prayer for the Dead (1996), and Serpent's Tooth (1997).

Decker, a Los Angeles Police Department detective, teams up, first professionally and then romantically, with a most unlikely crime-solving partner, Rina Lazarus, an orthodox Jewish woman whose introduction to the very secular world of crime occurs in Kellerman's first mystery novel in the series, The Ritual Bath (1986), which received a Macavity award for best first novel. Daughter of Oscar and Anne Steinberg Marder married Jona-than Seth Kellerman, 1972 children: Jesse, Rachel, Ilana, Alizaįaye Kellerman is best known for her mystery-detective series involving the recurring characters Peter Decker and Rina Lazarus.

Milk and honey kellerman