SUNDAY PROFILE : Sweet Mystery of Life

What are the odds that two kids would fall in love at first sight, marry, become a DDS and PhD respectively, raise four children and, somewhere along the way, independently and inexplicably decide to write crime novels, producing one novel per year for the past 10, all bestsellers?

Meet Kellerman and Kellerman.

Unless you’re a mystery maven, you may have seen the name in bookstores and assumed it belongs to a single author. Or maybe you know they’re husband and wife, and assume they write together.

But even Jimmy the Greek would probably not have taken bets that psychologist Jonathan and dentist Faye--neither of whom had a previous interest in crime detection--would become rich and famous writing tales of blood and guts from separate offices in the same kosher household.

“Life,” as Jonathan likes to say, “is full of fun surprises.”

*

It is a brilliant, breezy afternoon in Beverly Hills and the Kellerman household is ticking, as usual, like a Rolls-Royce clock.

Although the two younger children (ages 3 and 10) are at home behind the electronic gates with their parents, three dogs, a housekeeper and the Kellermans’ full-time assistant (who answers the door), there is not a bit of the chaos or clutter you might expect in a hectic, four-child domicile--even one that’s 8,000 square feet.

In fact, the only sound you hear in the comfortable, sunny study where Jonathan writes his books is the buzz of a baby wasp as it bumps against windows that face a wide expanse of manicured lawn and an azure swimming pool beyond.

A dog’s toy on the grass is the only visible sign of life.

Enter, Faye Kellerman. She is a delicate-boned woman with curly hair, no need for makeup, and a gauzy ankle-length dress that enhances her air of fragility.

Don’t be deceived.

Her husband calls her “cut-to-the-chase-Faye,” and “the ‘Rawhide’ of the family, who moves the herd on and gets ‘em out.”

Faye, true to her buildup, has decided to orchestrate this early April interview, a process that usually spans a few hours spread over two or three days.

“Impossible,” she says firmly, citing the upcoming Jewish Sabbath (on which no work may be done), the upcoming holiday of Passover (same problem), the children’s school projects, the need to get her next book on its way to the publisher, and the general press of her life as author and mother. Her days start at 6 a.m. when she prepares her four kids’ school lunches, then their breakfasts, jogs for an hour with the guard dog, drives the baby to preschool, reads the papers, plans the evening meal (which she cooks herself according to kosher dietary laws) and then works on her current novel for two to four hours.

That’s all before noon, mind you.

Afternoons are no less busy, she informs, reeling off a list of child-centered duties and housewifely obligations that would stagger a robot.

Because the Kellermans are Orthodox Jews, she says, she has only four weekdays to work on her books. And only a few hours on each because “afternoons and evenings are devoted to the kids. Then on Fridays, I cook the meals for Friday and Saturday nights.”

(For those unfamiliar with Judaism, Orthodox adherents do not labor or drive on the Sabbath. So food preparation must be done beforehand, and the family walks to synagogue on Saturdays.)

For all those reasons and more, Faye smiles, “I think we ought to take care of this interview today in the time allotted.”

No problem.

*

The Kellermans are self-described “workhorses” with a gift for gab, who just happen to have sold about 24 million copies of the 24 books they have written between them. (His 14 novels have sold 22 million so far, her 10 thrillers a more modest 2 million.)

“Our publishers love us because every one of our novels is still in print and selling briskly in backlist around the world,” Jonathan says, pointing to a shelf of hardcover Kellerman editions in Russian, Bulgarian, Polish, Japanese and Greek. “I’m still amazed by it all.”

His first published novel, about child abuse and a double homicide (“When the Bough Breaks,” 1985), won the Edgar Allen Poe Award and the Anthony Boucher Award, and was made into a television movie. John Gross in the New York Times called it “exceptionally exciting, written with skill and conviction.” Newsweek’s David Lehman called his second novel (“Blood Test,” 1986) “a relentlessly intelligent thriller” that describes L.A.’s “atmosphere of nouveau depravity and trendy nuttiness vividly.”

Faye’s first book (“The Ritual Bath,” 1986), about a brutal rape and murder in a religious bathhouse (called a mikvah), won faint praise from Los Angeles Times reviewer Elaine Kendall, who found it “sweetly romantic, universally appealing,” and “an educational introduction to Judaism.” Her main complaint: The love story was so compelling that it almost completely superseded the murder. Which is, it turns out, what Faye’s loyal fans really love about her work.

“I love the drama of love,” says Faye, with a huge grin. “And it helps [her writing] that even after 25 years together we’re still strongly attracted to each other. You have to continue to be boyfriend and girlfriend for [a long marriage like this] to work.”

Robert Randisi, founder of Private Eye Writers of America and co-founder of Mystery Scene magazine, says both Kellermans are “highly regarded in the mystery world. Jonathan is not as high in sales as John Grisham or Stephen King, who are in the stratosphere. But he’s right up there on all bestseller lists with the likes of Sue Grafton and Elmore Leonard. Faye is perceived as a top-flight author too, but not yet at the same sales level.”

Margo Kaufman, L.A. Times mystery critic, asks rhetorically the same thing everyone else asks: “How could two such excellent crime writers turn up in the same family? Jonathan summons up the energy of Los Angeles better than any other writer since Raymond Chandler. I started reading him first and became such an enormous fan that I frankly figured she could never measure up. So why get involved? It was like taking sides in a divorce. Then I read two of her books before going on a trip. I liked them so much and was so eager to read more that I paid $15 for a Faye Kellerman paperback I found in Bali. It was worth every cent.”

Jonathan’s psychologist hero, Dr. Alex Delaware, just happens to live in Los Angeles and specializes in child psychology, as did Kellerman in real life.

Kaufman describes Dr. Delaware as “so cool, sexy and sensitive that women tend to throw themselves at him” while he solves crimes that have “a seriously creepy psychological motivating factor which is always riveting.”

Faye’s fictional married couple, former widow Rina Lazarus and her second husband, police detective Peter Decker, just happen to be Orthodox Jews living in Los Angeles. The pair’s love-and-murder tales are told in what Kaufman describes as “truly sensuous prose.”

Liza Dawson, now executive editor at G.P. Putnam and formerly at William Morrow where she edited some of Faye’s books, says, “Faye’s scenes are filled with grit and blood and guts and curse words. Yet you fall in love with this wonderful couple she’s created, who have a vibrant marriage, a great sex life, and who deal with the meaning of faith and live by a strong moral code.”

Faye’s newest novel, “Justice,” is a gripping, sensual tale about two young Catholics magnetically drawn together in a doomed relationship. And her next book is written from the point of view of a priest.

*

So how did all this happen?

“Getting here was a long process, which involved enormous luck in a field where it’s rare to have luck. We want to make that clear,” Faye says.

“And both of us have a very high tolerance for failure,” adds Jonathan. “We have both failed a lot.”

Jonathan, the alleged “instant success,” wrote “at least eight complete novels that never got published” over 13 years, toiling “every night from 11 p.m. to 1 a.m. in an unheated Beverlywood garage while practicing psychology full time, being married and raising kids. I’d like to think my wife and children didn’t suffer because of that.”

“We didn’t; I encouraged him,” murmurs Faye.

Faye, 43, says she wrote from her early 20s, in every spare minute “while the babies were napping,” tossing out dozens of “unpublishable novels” before her first was accepted for publication nine years ago. Actually, it took Faye less time to get her first novel published than it had taken her husband.

To this day, Jonathan awakens every morning, chats with “whichever kids happen to be around,” exercises for an hour in his home gym, then closes the den door, turns off the phone and sits down to write “five good pages” before lunch.

Sometimes he writes two, sometimes 20, pages, he says. “If I ever came up with nothing usable, that would be OK. I’d rather write bad stuff than not write.”

Meanwhile, Faye is in her study doing exactly the same thing.

They lunch together unless one of them has other plans. But they never collaborate on work, both say, because “absolutely everything else in our life is such a total collaboration. This is the one area where we are separate.”

They do, however, critique each other’s work in progress, which Faye says caused some problems early in her career. “I didn’t know how to accept his remarks in the spirit they were given.”

Afternoons, he attends to the business of being a writer: foreign contracts, speaking engagements, investments for the family’s future.

She does household chores or sometimes rewrites for a while. When the kids start coming home from school, both say, all bets are off. The rest of the Kellermans’ day and evening belongs to Jesse, 17, Rachel, 14, Ilana, 10, and Aliza, 3.

“We’ve had kids in our 20s, 30s and 40s,” Jonathan says with a grin. “It looks like we’ll never be without them.”

“Just when our littlest one grows up,” Faye says, “we’ll probably have grandchildren from our oldest kids.”

Jonathan says family is “our first priority, above and before everything else.” Adds Faye, waving her arm at the opulence and antiques: “This all means nothing. It would be lonely and meaningless without the family.”

At this point Aliza toddles in, as if to prove her parents aren’t fibbing. Offering the visitor a gift of papers pasted together with neon yellow glue, she enunciates perfectly: “I used up all the glue. I’m worried there won’t be any glue for my family. What if my family needs glue?”

*

Faye and Jonathan met because each decided to attend a volleyball game sponsored by a Jewish group to which neither belonged. She was 18 and just starting UCLA; he was 21 and about to graduate.

“I loved her the minute I saw her. She was gorgeous. I introduced myself, and after talking with her I decided she was the smartest, most interesting person I’d ever met. I still feel that way.”

They were married a few months later, in 1972. “We were very young, very stupid and madly in love,” Faye says with a smile.

They were also kindred spirits in many ways. Faye, who grew up in Sherman Oaks, was the daughter of religious parents: a musically gifted mother and a father who owned a series of delis, where he struggled to make ends meet.

“We were middle class, a close-knit family--but there was never any spare change. To go into a retail shop like Judy’s to buy a skirt during my adolescence was a luxury I could not afford. We were White Front and Zody’s people.”

Jonathan, born into a religious family on New York’s Lower East Side, says his father was “a brilliant electronic engineer” who moved the family to Los Angeles when Jonathan was 9. They lived in the Pico-Doheny area on $37 a week in a little motel while his father established a business. (“I was happy, because the motel had a pool,” Jonathan recalls.) He went to Jewish elementary and high schools, and by the time his father became successful, Jonathan says, he was almost old enough to leave home.

After they married, Faye completed college as a math major and went straight into UCLA dental school, from which she graduated in 1978. She was seven months pregnant with their first child.

That same year, Jonathan completed his doctorate in psychology while holding down three part-time jobs. He did his internship and post-doctoral fellowship at Childrens Hospital in Los Angeles, where he was invited to join the staff in 1975. He started the hospital’s psycho-social rehabilitation program for children with cancer and their families the following year.

Through it all, he just kept “writing and writing and writing.”

He’d been writing compulsively since age 9, he says. At UCLA he worked on the Daily Bruin and won the prestigious Samuel Goldwyn literary award. In 1988, he told a Contemporary Author interviewer that he just kept “churning this crap out, and having it rejected and rejected and rejected.” Looking back, he says, “I can see that it was trash. It really is a matter of learning your craft.” (He had no such problems with nonfiction books, authoring “The Psychological Aspects of Childhood Cancer” and “Helping the Fearful Child,” published in 1980 and ’81.)

At 31, Jonathan quit his hospital work so he could “take this novel business seriously.” By then, he says, he had seen enough cases of murder, suicide and fatal diseases to give him some idea of the important things he wanted to deal with in his books. So he opened a private psychology practice, thinking business would be slow and he’d have more time to write. But there were more patients than he could handle. Still, he was “driven to keep writing.”

“I tried to stop” after being turned down for publication so many times, “but I found experientially that when I quit writing, I got depressed. I learned that I needed to write whether I was going to get published or not.”

He finished “When the Bough Breaks” and two more bestsellers before he finally felt secure enough to devote himself full time to crime novels.

“People said, wow, you write so well, maybe you should do something more literary than a crime novel. And I said, well, that means you want me to write basically the same book, but without a plot.”

He likes writing crime thrillers “because I like structure--a beginning, a middle and an end.” He also, quite obviously, likes to use his psychological expertise to enter the minds of fictional characters he creates, whose actions are not within society’s usual bounds.

*

During Jonathan’s zealous pursuit of education, career and a publishable novel, Faye was on her own treadmill.

After years of rising early to help her dad in the deli before school, then marrying while in college and going straight to dental school, she suddenly stopped. (She has never practiced dentistry.)

“I stayed home after my first baby--it was an incredible and totally discombobulating experience.” That’s when, for the first time, she was able to think about her life instead of just living it.

She started writing as “an act of catharsis,” much as many people write in diaries. “Everything was very autobiographical. I’m a sucker for a romance, and even in my mysteries today, there’s as much interest in the couple as in the mystery itself. That’s who I am. Love is just so fundamental.”

Faye says she didn’t think she had talent and never wanted to be an author. “I was a poor English student more comfortable with symbols than with language, which is why I majored in math.”

If her husband hadn’t been doing it for so long, she might never even have thought of trying. But soon it became a pleasurable habit, she says, and Jonathan encouraged her. He eventually called his agent and said, “Listen, I know what this sounds like, but my wife wrote a book. . . .”

After dozens of discarded attempts at romance novels, including a few manuscripts of 1,500 pages each, Faye settled on the mystery form. It permits her, she says, to address a variety of important contemporary issues such as rape (“Ritual Bath”), adoption (“Day of Atonement”), sin and redemption (“Justice”).

To make her work more personal, more interesting “and more from the heart,” she decided to inject Orthodox Judaism into some of her characters’ lives.

The decision was not a mistake. But if it had been, you can bet she’d have worked and worked on it until she got it right.

That’s the Kellerman creed.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

The Kellermans

Ages: Faye, 43; Jonathan, 46.

Background: She’s a DDS from UCLA who never practiced dentistry. He’s a PhD psychologist who left his practice to write.

Passions: Each other and their children: Jesse, 17; Rachel, 14; Ilana, 10; Aliza, 3. Then music, art, their papillon dog (Dreamy), their English bulldog (Archie), and their Sicilian mastiff (Donna).

Quotable:

Faye: “Jonathan and I never collaborate in our writing, because every other area of our lives is a total collaboration.”

Jonathan: “What’s important to Faye is what’s important to me. Values, morality, right and wrong. I think that’s why we write mysteries, because they deal with real and important issues.”