Now You See Me…
By Rochelle Krich
2005, Random House, New York, New York, 333 pages

“She’s with a man she met on the Internet, in a chat room. She phoned her sister Monday, and again this morning. She doesn’t want us to worry.” Jastrom grunted. “It’s an Orthodox Jewish chat room, so she thought it was safe,” he added, the irony tinged with bitterness. “Dinah though she was safe when she left her family’s tent to see the town.”

Rochelle Krich is the well known author of over 15 acclaimed mystery/ thrillers. This novel is the fourth in her Molly Blume series that follows a Los Angeles crime reporter who finds herself not writing but part of the mystery itself. Molly is selected by Rabbi Bailor’s family to help find his missing daughter, Dassie. Molly insists that the police should be involved in the search, but the family refuses as news of the disappearance could threaten the reputation of the entire family. The novel is filled with twists and turns in the plot. The reader is drawn into this Orthodox suburb as they anxiously wait for Dassie to return home and the truth to unfold.

(Reviewed in JTA Issue April 2007)

Straight into Darkness
By Faye Kellerman
2005, Warner Books, New York, New York, 528 pages

So I paint in reds because I express myself in paint. Words have always been harder for me. I have tried writing but it is not the same. Painting involves corporeal participation- the eye, the hand, the fingers, the brush against the blank canvas, the palette knife gouging through layers of impasto…I paint in red to honor both life and death.

Fay Kellerman is the prolific author of over 29 mystery/ thriller novels. Her husband Jonathan is also a well acclaimed author in the same genre. This work is perhaps her most creative, as it is a historical fiction set in Munich in 1929. She was inspired by her father’s own experiences while stationed in Germany and is able to recreate that time period between the two world wars. This is the intriguing story of the search for a serial killer that begins with the discovery of the brutal murder of a young society woman. The entire city erupts in panic in a time of widespread fear, as history unfolds in the backdrop.

Murder Duet- A Musical Case
By Batya Gur
1999, Harper Collins Publishers, New York, New York, 433 pages

“We have a painting worth half a million dollars that was stolen and we’ve recovered…We have surgical tape and a cello string, but we don’t know where the string came from. We have a pair of gloves, whose owner we don’t know, but those don’t mean much. We have two bodies…”

Murder Duet is the fifth mystery novel written by Batya Gur, a Jerusalem resident and literary critic. In this book, her fictional character, Israeli policeman Michael Ohayon, again becomes involved in a murder investigation. The novel begins with  Ohayon’s discovery of a baby crying from inside a cardboard box set outside his door. The neighbour, Nita van Gelden, a cellist, finds that one of her family members has been murdered. Gur weaves together musical appreciation and knowledge to set the tone for this “allegro paced” mystery.

(Reviewed in JTA Issue April 2007)

Red, White and Blue
By Susan Isaacs
1998, Harper Collins Publishers, New York, New York, 402 pages

On a glacial December afternoon in the final year of the last century, a certain Herschel Blaustein, a thirty-six-year-old winemaker from a shtetl not many kilometers out of Cracow, stood on the lurching deck of the SS Polonia and snatched the chapped but finely shaped hand of Dora Schottland, a fifteen-year-old orphan… the Statue of Liberty came into view.

Susan Isaacs is the author of eleven well acclaimed fiction novels. Red, White and Blue is the story of Charlie Blair and Lauren Miller who are drawn together by an appalling hate crime and their passion for justice. Charlie is selected by Blair, a special agent of the FBI, to secretly infiltrate a dangerous white supremacist, anti-Semitic group called Wrath. Meanwhile, Lauren, a journalist from Long Island, has been hired by the Jewish News to investigate a bombing that Wrath is suspected of masterminding. The novel is suspenseful as well as offering insight as to what it means to be an American and how we define our own identities.

(Reviewed in JTA Issue April 2007)

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