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On her normal night's rounds, two year veteran of the Los Angeles Police Department, Cindy Decker, is flagged down behind a restaurant. She's made aware of the sound of a baby crying from within the depths of a dumpster and she dives in to investigate. To her horror she comes across a newborn baby, the umbilical cord still attached. As she calls in the detectives and the ambulance while holding the child, she is elated to have rescued a life and is also thrilled to know that it's going to be a big story and a huge plus to her career. Fast thinking gets the full term infant to the hospital and into the charge of Critical Care Pediatric nurse Yakov "Koby" Kutiel, an Ethiopian born Jew. Yet another high point in Cindy's life occurs as they instantly click. Cindy Decker is determined to find the baby's mother, knowing that she had to have been in a horrible state and in dire need of medical attention to have given birth in an alley and to have dumped her baby. It seems that something horrendous happened in the last novel of the series to Cindy and her father, LAPD Lieutenant Peter Decker, but it's never once explained. It's touched on, blamed for Cindy's lack of trust for her fellow cops, and it's the reason Cindy will push herself onto the detectives who are assigned to this case as she works to get her gold shield. But the readers are never told anything about the previous case, only enough to detail the aftermath and to furnish the basis of the name of book. Street Dreams refers to new copsı nightmares of violence and personal injury from their job on the streets. Because she lusts for her gold shield, even more than she lusts for the tall and enigmatic Koby, Cindy toes the line and gets advice on how to work the case from her father, the lieutenant. Before long she finds the mother of the child, a mentally and physically challenged girl, and from there Cindy jumps into a case that will once again put her life in danger. STREET DREAMS is the fifteenth of Faye Kellerman's series featuring LAPD Lieutenant Peter Decker and his Orthodox Jewish wife Rina Lazarus, but the lead character in this story is Decker's 28 year-old tall, fiery, redheaded first born from a previous marriage, Cindy. This abridged audio book, read by Nancy McKeon, is a fast paced pleasurable six and a half hour listen. Nancy McKeon, remembered by many if us as the tough Jo from the 80's television program "The Facts Of Life," does a nice job of reading this book. Her Cindy Decker is right on target, portraying the smart mouthed, eager cop perfectly. Unfortunately, her Ethiopian accent falls short as she speaks for Koby, who's supposed to speak English as well as any Ivy League graduate. McKeon uses an unknown halting accent for Koby and it sometimes sounds closer to Mexico than Africa. It can be that this CD audio book is very abridged, but the whole story is only that of Cindy, her case and love life, thereıs small inclusion of her father and even less of Rina. Officer Cindy's excessively polite and helpful to other cops and is constantly declaring her complete love and respect for her father -- an interesting but curious touch for a child of divorce. In this audio book, Cindy discovers the identity of the child's mother right away, and from a side comment made by an interviewee, manages to open up a Pandoraıs' box of rape, murder, attempted murder, and an interracial gang of thugs. We are also privy to her on again and off again romance with Koby, with their long discussions of interracial, but same religion, love and their heated attraction for each other. The romance section of this story seems to be very abridged, because their getting together to become serious about each other seems to go from zero to a thousand without much in the story to back it up. Even though you can sense that quite a bit of the novel was left out of this audio book, itıs still fun to listen to. Faye Kellerman is at her best with the Peter Decker/Rina Lazarus series and itıs good to see that Cindyıs future in the series is locked in.
Reviewed by Sharon Katz, July 2003
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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