Monthly Archives: October 2009

Review: The Trojan Dog by Dorothy Johnston

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Title: The Trojan Dog

Author: Dorothy Johnston

Publisher: Wakefield Press [2000]

ISBN:1-86254-486-7

Length: 268 pages

Genre: Amateur sleuth

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

My rating: 1/5

One-liner: A confusing, disjointed mess.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

The book is set in 1996 in the lead up to the Australian Federal Election of that year. Amid fear that the government of the day would soon be ousted Sandra Mahoney is contracted to write a report on administrative out-workers for the department dealing with labour issues. Soon after she starts the woman who hired Sandra, Rae Evans, is accused of fraudulently obtaining $900,000. For reasons I still can’t explain Sandra decides that Evans is not guilty and sets out to ‘investigate’ the case (if you define investigate as blunder through a series of conversations and random acts of stupidity).

I struggled with this book thought can’t really explain why. Why I didn’t throw it against a wall that is. Probably something to do with the fact it was given to me as a gift.

It’s the most confusingly convoluted plot I have come across in a very long time. It felt as if someone had laid all the book’s paragraphs out end-to-end then rearranged them randomly before sticking them back together and calling it a book. Some of the several dozen story threads seemed to end almost mid-sentence while others went on interminably but in neither case there was not much advancement in the main story. The case hinged on computer fraud which required complex explanations of hacking and other techno-babble and the parts of the story dealing with these sounded as if they’d been translated from the Martian by a drunk babel fish. When we finally got to the resolution it was a complete non-event, I could barely remember having encountered the bloke who turned out to be the bad guy although I had long since given up caring ‘whodunit’ (in fact I kept forgetting what ‘it’ was).

Another problem with the book was what I took, by the end anyway, for pretentiousness but may have been poor copy editing. I’m way more interested in politics than the average person (I remember election years the way others do World Cups or Olympics) but for the typical reader (and anyone outside this country) I can only imagine that chunks of this book, especially the first third, would make no sense at all. It’s full of obscure references to the political landscape and is peppered with acronyms that I can’t believe anyone outside the Canberra scene would have understood then let alone 13 years later.

The characters were equally difficult to come to grips with. The book is told in the first-person voice from Sandra’s point of view which should have made it a personal story but didn’t. Sandra was vague and timid most of the time which made her occasional risking of life and limb quite unbelievable. Her reason for believing in Rae Evans was only ever hinted at and never explained why she went to such lengths to find out what really happened. Not that I need to like a character to enjoy a book but when everything else is going wrong too an unlikable protagonist is one burden too many so I found Sandra’s insipidity and shoddy treatment of many of the people around her very disagreeable and when at the end of the book she decides she is going to become a computer analyst I wanted to scream “oh really, so all I have to do to get a new job is call myself an air traffic controller eh?”

Sandra’s love interest is Ivan something-Russian and he isn’t her husband (a fact which should have added far more interest to the narrative than it did) and he is a caricature of all things geek. Most of the others who features in the book are so randomly discussed or involved with the story that I didn’t form any other lasting opinions.

I could actually go on some more but I’d probably start getting really rude and/or personal and I really try to avoid that on Reactions to Reading. I’m only cross because I feel I wasted a lot of time on this book and that isn’t the author’s fault because I could have stopped at any point.

Other Stuff

I was relieved when I read this review in the Australian Crime Fiction Database and realised I was not alone in my thoughts about this book because I was beginning to think I was completely mad. Well respected Aussie crime fiction reviewer Graeme Blundell says that Johnston’s series has improved considerably since this outing but I can’t imagine spending another moment in Sandra Mahoney’s company.

Crime Fiction Alphabet: D is for Deadlock

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My entry this week in Kerrie’s Crime Fiction Alphabet meme is Sara Paretsky’s Deadlock. The second in what has recently become a 13-book series, Deadlock was published in 1984 and features one of the earliest hard-edged female private eyes in crime fiction: VI Warshawski. The plot displays many of the features the series is known for including the involvement of VI’s friends or family and lots of under cover work as VI investigates the murder of her cousin Boom Boom, an ex hockey player. Boom Boom is assumed to have drowned by accident in Lake Michigan but VI thinks differently and investigates his new employer, a large grain company, only to discover corruption on a grand scale. The book features blackmail, sabotage and men doing nasty things and there’s no one but VI to stop them. In this interview Paretsky says the novel was written for her husband Courtenay Wright who is an ex naval officer, which possibly explains how all the shipping details were so spot on.

The plotting is complex but tight which makes the book a genuine page turner. It is also one of those books where when you work out the clever double meaning of the title you smack your head Homer Simpson style.

This series was one of the first I started reading as a late teenager when I deliberately sought out books in which the women did more than either wait patiently for their men to come home or hop into bed with any bloke that asked. For that reason I really enjoyed VI who was starting out in her own business after a short-lived career in the public defender’s office and, although she had a healthy sex-life, didn’t behave as if a man was the answer to all her prayers. Other traits I enjoyed were that VI never responded appropriately to ‘authority’ (yes mum I particularly identified with that one) and drank Johnnie Walker black label scotch at the same time as being an opera buff and staunchly loyal to her friends. These contradictions in her personality made her seem very realistic to me and also led to unpredictable twists and turns in the books as she didn’t always behave as you might expect.

The other standout feature of Paretsky’s novels, including this one, is the depiction of Chicago. One Christmas I visited my brother and sister-in-law who’d been living in that city for a year and they were both astonished at how much of the city I could recognise or quickly get the hang of and I owe it all to my many re-readings of these books. Despite a windy, wintry cold the depth of which I’d never experienced before, I loved doing my very own VI tour and it’s still one of my favourite places to visit.

I used to wait with breathless anticipation for each new book in this series but I’ve become a bit disillusioned of late. Although it’s been four years since the last book in the series was published I haven’t rushed to get my hands on this year’s release: Hardball. The last several books have, for me, seen too much of Paretsky’s own politics bleed into the narrative and I got tired of being lectured at about the evils of big business, racism and whatever other rant Paretsky felt like making. VI had always had a social conscience but in the later books the social themes seem to have taken over the stories and, as always, this makes me cranky. I’ve no quibble with authors wearing their political hearts on their sleeves but only if they do it naturally, through their characters’ actions. Still, for old time’s sake I will be reading Hardball eventually.

My crime fiction alphabet so far

Sunday Salon 2009-10-25: Week In Review

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I normally write my Sunday Salon post while sipping coffee at a nearby cafe after my Sunday walk but this week I seem to have made it to Sunday evening without stopping to write my post. How is it that some days disappear without you even noticing?

Books Then and Now

This week I finished Frozen Tracks by Åke Edwardson, Tilt A Whirl by Chris Grabenstein and Born Standing Up by Steve Martin. I enjoyed them all for different reasons although I found Martin reading his own biography on audio book surprisingly disappointing. His delivery was very flat.

I’m currently reading The Trojan Dog by Dorothy Johnston (an Australian book not much talked about that I don’t quite know what to make of yet) and next on my print pile is another new to me author: Tania Carver’s The Surrogate. Before I head off to work tomorrow I have to decide between listening to Sandra Brown’s The Chill Factor or Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express read by David Suchet. Choices Choices Choices.

Arrivals and Departures

There’s no way I can twist this to make it sound good. I acquired seven books this week while disposing of only a single book via bookmooch! I swear I will start my own 12 step program if I can’t stop this madness soon. A person with an entire year’s worth of reading on her TBR shelves does not need to be bringing more books into the house but I can’t seem to control myself. The good news is I only paid for three of them (and they were all on special) but still.

Link Fest

Again I’ve spent a limited amount of time online this week. Who’s got time for dithering about on the internet when Australian TV finally started showing one of my favourite shows (previously only available from channel bit torrent) QI? I may have mentioned my adoration of Stephen Fry before (I’d be shocked if I hadn’t) and am delighted I can finally watch this show legally.

Anyway, I did manage to draw myself away from repeated viewings of legal Mr Fry and find a few things of interest

  • An article from the UK’s Guardian newspaper that discusses crime fiction reviewer Jessica Mann’s decision to stop reading and reviewing the plethora of crime fiction which depicts women being tortured and brutalised. The article quotes award-winning crime fiction author Val McDermid as saying

There has been a general desensitisation among readers, who are upping the ante by demanding ever more sensationalist and gratuitous plot lines

I’d love to know who exactly is demanding all this extra violence. I read crime fiction and i’m not demanding it. Not a single one of the crime fiction devotees I know is demanding it either. In fact many of us are more likely to join Ms Mann’s boycott of the sub genre than any group demanding more blood, rape and victimisation.

Review: Born Standing Up by Steve Martin

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Title: Born Standing Up: A Comic’s Life

Author: Steve Martin

Narrator: Steve Martin

Publisher: Clipper Audio [2007]

ISBN: 9781407412740

Length: 4hrs 3 mins

Genre: Autobiography

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

My rating: 3/5

One-liner: A sombre look at a funny man’s life

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Steve Martin concentrates on only a certain portion of his life with this offering which, while incorporating elements of his childhood, focuses on his dozen or so years as a stand-up comic during the late 60′s and into the 70′s. I’ve always thought being a comedian would be one of the toughest jobs on earth and so was interested to hear him tell of the years of hard work and rejection that led to his success as a headliner of arena shows being a regular on such shows as Saturday Night Live and The Tonight Show. He talks at some length about how he developed and honed his act from the mish-mash it started as to the more polished work it became where all the sweat and effort were hidden from the audience. It made me wish I’d been able to see him at one of his early live shows when he regularly took his audience members on a tour of the venue’s car park. There are also a smattering of anecdotes about his meetings and relationships with other celebrities though not a lot of these and, happily from my point of view, no dirt is dished on anyone.

While there are occasional interesting insights in the book it is for the most part simply a recitation of facts about Martin’s working life. There’s little reflection about the impact various events had on him, even when he talks about serious issues such as his depression or his strained relationship with his father. He says at one point that he’s a very private person and that becomes so clear by the end of the book that I wondered why on earth he bothered to include those more serious personal things at all if he only ever intended to boil them down to an unemotional sentence or two.

I thought it would be interesting to hear Martin read his own words but his delivery was, presumably deliberately, very flat. It didn’t matter whether he was re-telling a funny anecdote or recounting his emotional final meeting with his dying father: his tone of voice was exactly the same monotone. I think this is one of the few instances where I think I’d have enjoyed the print book more than the audio version as I’d have given a bit more emotion to some sections of the book than Martin did.

I enjoyed the parts of this book that dealt with the profession of stand-up comedy as I like peeking into worlds I know little about. I’d have preferred him to include more of these details than the snippets of his personal life that I assume he included reluctantly (or under pressure from publishers) based on the lack of substance those portions of the book had.

Review: Tilt A Whirl by Chris Grabenstein

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Title: Tilt A Whirl

Author: Chris Grabenstein

Publisher: Audible Inc [2007]

ISBN: n/a [downloaded from audible.com]

Length: 8 hours 18 minutes

Setting: New Jersey, USA, present day

Genre: Police Procedural

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

My rating: 4/5

One-liner: Brilliantly narrated and entertaining feel-good book.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Sea Haven, on the New Jersey shore, is overrun by summer tourists and the most serious crime is a stole bike. One Saturday morning two local police officers, John Ceepak, a former MP, and Danny Boyle, a rookie part-timer, see a hysterical young girl covered in blood. She tells them her father was shot in the local amusement park. Ceepak is asked by his old army buddy who is now the Police Chief to head up the investigation into Reginald Hart’s murder and he also gives his word to Ashley, the young girl, that he’ll protect her from the danger which still surrounds her.

If you had told me that every time I pressed stop I’d be itching to get back to a single-body whodunit narrated by a 20-something party animal and featuring a goody-two-shoes ex-soldier who lives by a corny moral code I’d have given you the look. The “I don’t think you have a clue and thanks for nothing” look. But, based on the infinitesimally small chance I might be wrong, I accepted a passionate audio book recommendation from Belle (of Ms Bookish) and was thoroughly entertained from start to finish.

First I must mention that Jeff Woodman is a superb narrator: managing to give a completely different yet realistic sounding voice (complete with regional accent) to more than a dozen characters of different ages and genders. I have no doubt that his skill is part of the reason I so thoroughly enjoyed the book and had such vivid images of the setting and characters in my head.

I thought the choice of narrative voice in the story was a particularly good one. Using someone who is an observer and a participant in the action worked well, especially when combined with the fact that Danny Boyle is a rookie working with a more experienced policeman. This provided plausible opportunities for the kind of explanatory scenes and missed bits of action that can become clunky in first-person narratives. Danny also turned out to be a likable, engaging young man with a good sense of humour and the story unfolded quite naturally through his eyes.

The use of a ‘Duddley Do-Right’ style character in the form of John Ceepak (whose life motto is ‘neither lie nor cheat not steal nor tolerate those who do) is a risk because I cannot possibly be the only potential reader who is wary of such fantasies. However, even though he is too good to be truly credible, I found myself interested in his back story and smiling at his all around good-guy-ness and rooting for him to triumph over the bad guys. Maybe even natural born cynics like me need to take a day off from being jaded every once in a while.

Although there were some corny, predictable lines the broader story kept me guessing right to the end, the New Jersey Shore setting felt realistic, the characters were charming and overall it was the literary equivalent of a feel good movie. I’ll definitely be listening to the rest of this series (though unlike Belle who gobbled them all up at once I’m going to space them out).

Other stuff

Here is a review by Belle (from Ms Bookish) (thanks again for the recommendation) and a review of the whole series by Beth (from Beth Fish Reads) who introduced Belle to the series. Don’t you love the way the book blogging world works?

Review: Frozen Tracks by Ake Edwardson

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Title: Frozen Tracks

Author: Åke Edwardson (translated by Laurie Thompson)

Publisher: Vintage  Books [original edition 2001, this translation 2008]

ISBN: 9780099472070

Length: 538 pages

Setting: Sweden, Present day

Genre: Police Procedural

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

My rating: 4/5

One-liner: An emotionally charged and unpredictable novel which I struggled to put down.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

In the weeks before Christmas several police stations in Gothenburg receive phone calls from parents who think their children might have, temporarily, been kidnapped by ‘a mister’. However because the incidents are minor (the children are unhurt and parents aren’t even sure the children whether the children have imagined things) and not logged centrally no one realises there might be a pattern of crimes emerging. At the same time DCI Erik Winter and his team are investigating a series of apparently random but brutal bashings of young men in the city. Both sequences of events begin to gain momentum while the personal lives of the investigating team take a battering too.

I’ve not read the previous two books in this series that have been translated into English but I don’t think I am at much disadvantage. I was quickly engaged by the eclectic investigative team who are dogged, introspective and quite funny. There’s a mildly insulting banter that is depicted between the team that lightens an otherwise quite sombre book and I thoroughly enjoyed that aspect (and kudos to the translator for this in particular as I think humour must be the most difficult thing to get right). At different times though team members can be emotional with each other, such as when Winter is consoling his friend and colleague Bertil Ringmar, and this depiction of people being affected and conflicted by events in their personal and professional lives is very compelling. Edwardson does a good job too at showing the effects of crime on victims and their families and also the families of investigators although the same depth wasn’t really visible with the main suspect who I found to be a bit stereotypical.

The story is, for the most part, well constructed although I did find the ending a little more convoluted than it needed to be. However the parallel cases are developed nicely with a realistic sense of wrong turns and dead ends and any linkages between the two threads are plausible. There are some slow points in the pacing which could easily have been removed by tighter editing and I am, again, at a loss to explain why books are so much longer these days than their counterparts from 10 or 20 years ago.

Edwardson has an odd style of writing in which a good deal of the action is inferred rather than described explicitly and many of the facts of the story are revealed through conversations between the team members rather than pure narrative description. I can understand that this might be frustrating for some readers as it leaves quite a few things unknown but it gave me the feeling that I was eavesdropping on a current investigation rather than reading a report once the case had been closed and I liked the immediacy and unpredictability this offered.

Other stuff

It was this review by Maxine at Euro Crime that made me pick this book up from the specials table (because I never buy books I don’t need without prompting) and Fiona at Euro Crime also offers her take on the book.

Crime Fiction Alphabet: C is for Contest

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This week’s entry into the Crime Fiction Alphabet meme concerns Australian author Matthew Reilly‘s first novel: Contest which was published in this version in 2000 and I read in 2001. I’m not even sure it qualifies for the genre but I tend to think of crime and thrillers as vaguely on the same spectrum and I do like a jolly good romp every now and again.

Widower and radiologist Steven Swain is relaxing at his Long Island home one afternoon when he is selected by aliens to represent Earth in an intergalactic game which is played every thousand years. The good news is he will have a home turf advantage (the game will take place in the New York City public library) but the bad news is it’s a game played to the death. And Swain’s 11-year-old daughter Holly is along for the ride. Swain is transported to the library and has the game rules speedily explained to him and is introduced to his guide Selexin before being thrust into a contest of wits, cunning and luck.

What I like about Contest is that although it has a far-fetched premise it doesn’t get lost in the ‘other world’ details that can so often happen with this kind of story. Basically it’s a ‘normal guy gets caught up in an abnormal situation’ kind of thriller and you don’t need to learn a new language or be able to faithfully recite a list of names with no consonants to enjoy it. It’s the story of a loving father trying to get himself and his daughter out of a mess not of their making and the cheating aliens and other nasty surprises could just as easily be gangsters with guns or spies with poison darts as in more conventional thrillers. The book rollicks along at a cracking pace and there’s a good deal of humour scattered throughout to add to the enjoyment. There’s not a load of character development or pensive, introspective moments but if you go looking for those in a thriller you’re almost always going to be disappointed.

It’s well known in Australia that this book, Reilly’s first, was rejected by every publisher in the country so he published it himself. This perseverance earned him some publicity and he then scored a publishing deal for his first Shane Schofield (a.k.a. Scarecrow) action adventure Ice Station which became a best seller. There have since been three more novels featuring Scarecrow, a separate series featuring Jack West Jr (the third of these, The Five Greatest Warriors, will be released tomorrow here in Australia) and several standalone novels. All the Reilly books that I’ve read are jam-packed with action and make particularly good audio-books if you like that kind of thing.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

I’ve decided to add an extra challenge to my posts in this series by attempting to make all 26 about books I read prior to starting this blog that only have one word titles. So far, so good:

Sunday Salon 2009-10-18: Week in Review

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Books Then and Now

The two books I finished this week were The Unorthodox Murder of Rabbi Wahl by Joseph Telushkin and Ann Cleeves’ White Nights. Both were above average reads and each offered something unique.

My current reads are all thanks to you, my fellow book bloggers. Last week I asked for audio book recommendations and all the suggestions I hadn’t already read are now waiting patiently in my audible wishlist (I have an account which allows me two downloads per month). Belle of Ms Bookish was so passionate about Chris Grabenstein’s John Ceepack novels narrated by Jeff Woodman that I started listening to the first in the series, Tilt-a-Whirl, immediately.  My current print book, Åke Edwardson’s Frozen Tracks was also recommended by a book blogger: Maxine from Petrona whose review is at Euro Crime. I wouldn’t have chosen either book for myself based on the blurbs alone but I’ve grown to trust my favourite book bloggers and so have been rewarded with two very different but thoroughly enjoyable reading experiences. Lucky me.

I’m not sure what I’ll read next. There are more than a hundred books on my TBR pile but none are screaming at me especially loudly just yet although I suspect it’s time for something Australian.

Arrivals and Departures

Rarely for me this week I have maintained the status quo. I didn’t acquire any books or dispose of any. But before you all congratulate me for my restraint I should declare that I did do some online shopping this week and expect my orders to start trickling in soon. I blame the global financial crisis which has done terrible things to everyone’s economy but ours which means that our little Aussie dollar buys a heck of a lot more than it used to and I’m making hay while the sun shines. Oh and I’m very (very) weak.

Link Fest

I haven’t spend much time online this week but a couple of reports about the multitude of awards handed out at the annual Bouchercon caught my eye:

  • I’m sure it’s lovely for the authors and publishers to have so many chances to win something but some of the categories have baffled me. The Barry Awards gave an award for Best British Novel which was won by Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (written by a Swede, set in Sweden) from a field of equally non-British novels. What’s the point?
  • I also noticed that there was an Anthony Award for Best Cover Art, which was also won by The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. I don’t find the US cover art (which won the award) nearly as striking as the UK/Aust cover sitting on my shelves. What about you?
US TGWTDT

US TGWTDT

UK TGWTDT

UK TGWTDT

Just so you know The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo also picked up Best First Mystery (Macavity Awards voted on by members of Mystery Readers International) and Best First Novel (Anthony Awards which are voted on by the convention’s attendees).

…and one more thing

AAGA Logo1

Nothing to rant about this week but I would like to announce that I finally did the draw for winners of the Aussie Author Giveaway #2 (yes I know I’m slack). Margot Kinberg and Maggie Mason have won copies of PD Martin’s Body Count while Ann in Ottowa will be receiving a copy of Brian Kavanagh’s The Embroidered Corpse. I have more signed copies of PD Martin’s books for next month’s give away as well as some other titles so please come back on the first of November to enter.

Review: White Nights by Ann Cleeves

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Title: White Nights [Unabridged Audiobook]

Author: Ann Cleeves

Narrator: Gordon Griffin

Publisher: ISIS Audio Books [2008]

ISBN: N/A [downloaded from audible.com]

Length: 11hrs 35mins

Setting: Shetland Islands, Scotland, Present day

Genre: Police Procedural

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

My rating: 3.5/5

One-liner: A story where setting takes center stage, ably supported by compelling characters.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

It’s summer in Shetland and well-known artist Bella Sinclair is hosting an exhibition of her work alongside that of new artist Fran Hunter. Although there are not as many guests at the opening as Bella expected, one unknown Englishman does make an impression when he breaks down in tears at the sight of one of the paintings. Local Detective Jimmy Perez, attending the exhibition on a date with Fran Hunter, takes the man aside and discovers he has amnesia. When the man disappears from the gallery Jimmy doesn’t make much effort to find him but wishes he had done when the man is discovered dead the next morning. This presumed suicide and subsequent events all seem to be affected by the endless daylight of the far northern summer and the isolation of the islands.

I’m a sucker for books set in remote locations. They are as different from my inner-city life as it gets (and not somewhere I’d willingly spend more than about 5 days) but I love reading about them. Cleeves does a superb job of immersing readers in the isolated world populated by familiar faces  who, although they share much, all seem to work incredibly hard at keeping a little piece of themselves private. I quickly developed an image of Biddista, the village of half a dozen houses where most of the action takes place, and its inhabitants thanks to Cleeves’ imagery and her depictions of how the locals interact with the various ‘incomers’ in the story.

Cleeves takes time too to develop a range of characters. Jimmy Perez is engaging as he pursues both personal and professional interests despite the fact he is unsure of himself in both spheres. I thought his mixture of introspection and decisiveness quite realistic although I was a bit bored by his somewhat laboured relationship with Fran. Several of the island ‘old-timers’ were utterly absorbing including Kenny who has the misfortune to discover more than one body and who seemed to represent the Islands’ struggle to have its traditions coexist with modern ways. The Inverness Inspector in charge of the case, Roy Taylor, was a different type of character all together but equally well depicted and a good source of conflict for the novel.

For me the book fell down a bit in its story. The establishment portion was quite good but after that I found the plot fairly predictable and I actually thought the ending a bit too melodramatic (and not terribly credible) which was out of keeping with the earlier events. As all the suspects were highlighted then rejected during the final scenes I got the sense that the culprit had been chosen for shock value more than continuity.

I haven’t read the first book in this quartet but I didn’t feel that I was at any disadvantage. There were mentions of earlier events but I wasn’t troubled by not knowing the details which scores bonus points from me as books which can be read independently seem to be a rare commodity in crime fiction these days. Although the story wasn’t the most gripping I’ve read there is much else to recommend this book, especially when narrated by the delightful Gordon Griffin who managed to portray an entire range of people without really changing his voice at all.

Other Stuff

I reviewed another book set in Shetland last year, SJ Bolton’s Sacrifice, and this is the second book in Ann Cleeves’ Shetland Quartet: for islands with a population of around 23,000 people they seem to be inspiring a disproportionate number of murders!

White Nights is also reviewed at It’s Criminal, Mysteries in Paradise, Euro Crime, Euro Crime again and, for a review with a difference, try WhereDunnit

Review: The Unorthodox Murder of Rabbi Wahl by Joseph Telushkin

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Title: The Unorthodox Murder of Rabbi Wahl (the 1st Daniel Winter mystery)

Author: Joseph Telushkin

Publisher: Bantam Books [1987]

ISBN: 0553258095

Length: 180 pages

Setting: Los Angeles, USA, contemporary present day

Genre: Amateur sleuth (with a smidgen of police procedural)

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

My rating: 3.5/5

One-liner: An off-beat setting for a classic whodunnit.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

As well as being the Rabbi for a small Los Angeles synagogue Daniel Winter hosts a religious-themed radio show. One Sunday evening he puts together a panel of three women who are outspoken on the issue of feminism and general womens’ issues. One of these women is Rabbi Myra Wahl who is from a different synagogue in the city. The show is a lively one but towards the end Myra Wahl hurls an extremely offensive insult at Daniel Winter and when she begs his forgiveness he does not give it. As she jogs home from the radio station she is killed by a hit and run driver and Daniel is soon a prime suspect although Myra Wahl has made several other enemies in her young life. Daniel is provided information that the police don’t have access to and so runs a somewhat parallel investigation to the official one.

Reading a lot of mysteries as I do it’s difficult to find settings and characters that I haven’t seen a hundred times before so I was attracted to the premise of this book. Happily the execution lived up to the promise. In tandem with the classically well constructed plot was an exploration of the sorts of subjects we’re normally advised against discussing in polite company including religion, abortion and the treatment of homosexuality in the Jewish faith. I’m not sure that I’d want all my books to be so serious but I found it refreshing to read something of a ‘cosy’ that isn’t populated by women who shop.

Daniel Winter is a very likable character although he seems a bit too perfect to believe. However a minor thread of the novel, in which he has to decide if he wants to continue being a Rabbi or become a full-time radio host with a national show, made him seem more human. The only other character depicted with any real depth is Brenda Goldstein, a some-time member of his synagogue and a police psychologist who becomes involved in the investigation of Wahl’s murder. The one character I found difficult to swallow was Lieutenant Joe Cerezzi who is ostensibly in charge of the case but who seems remarkably cavalier about allowing a psychologist and a Rabbi to do almost all of the investigating.

Ultimately I found the depiction of both the rituals of the Jewish religion and some sensitive issues as seen from the point of view of a Rabbi a quite refreshing change from the more traditional mystery settings. It was definitely this aspect of the novel that led to me reading it in a couple of sittings as the mystery itself was perfectly serviceable but nothing extraordinary.

Other stuff

In all there were three books in this series although Josepth Telushkin, himself a Rabbi, has many non-fiction and religious works published as well.