Murder in Jerusalem: A Michael Ohayon Mystery - Hardcover

Gur, Batya

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0060852933 ISBN 13: 9780060852931

Publisher: Harper, 2006

Synopsis

Modern Israel is a place filled with contradictions: the beautiful landscape often rife with human conflict; the tranquil and the peaceful in constant struggle with terrible destruction; and amazing human love and kindness set against a backdrop of civil strife. Through the eyes of a writer like Batya Gur and her finest creation, Chief Superintendent Michael Ohayon, these complexities are treated with an intimate familiarity and rare depth of understanding.

When a woman's body is discovered in the wardrobe warehouses of Israel Television, the brooding Ohayon embarks on a tangled and bloody trail of detection through the corridors and studios of Israel's official television station and, especially, through the relations, fears, loves, and courage of the people who make the station what it is. It is a journey that brings into question the very ideals upon which Ohayon -- and indeed the entire nation -- was raised, ideals that may have led to terrible crimes.

Chief Superintendent Ohayon has spent his career surrounded by perplexing and horrific cases, but perhaps nothing disturbs him more deeply than what this mysterious woman's murder reveals. For the media, often at the center of the Israeli consciousness -- a place where political tensions; hostility; corruption; and the ethnic, social, and religious divisions that shake the nation come together -- may indeed be at the root of an unspeakable evil.

Murder in Jerusalem is the crowning achievement of a magnificent career, this final installment in the Michael Ohayon series a wonderful parting gift from the incomparable Batya Gur -- one last fascinating visit to an always tumultuous land, in the company of a writer and a detective so many devoted readers have loved so well.

About this title

About the Author:

Batya Gur (1947-2005) lived in Jerusalem, where she was a literary critic for Haaretz, Israel's most prestigious paper. She earned her master's in Hebrew literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and she also taught literature for nearly twenty years.

From Booklist:

The final Michael Ohayon novel from the supremely talented Gur, who died of cancer in May 2005, marks a premature but stirring conclusion to an outstanding crime series. As in the previous installments, murder again takes Israeli police superintendent Ohayon inside a closed society, where he must ferret out motive and killer from within a tightly knit group of people entangled by work, love, and jealousy. Past adventures have penetrated the worlds of kibbutzniks, scholars, psychologists, and musicians; here, it's life within the Israeli national television network that is rent asunder when a set designer is killed by a falling pillar. The apparent accident turns out to be something far different, and soon enough Ohayon must deal with multiple murders. Like P. D. James, Gur uses the closed-society frame to set up a world where conflict is decades old and--until violence finally erupts--kept far beneath the surface. Ohayon, a deeply introspective and profoundly melancholic man, sorts through the psychological undercurrents that drive his cases with great sensitivity, much in the manner of James' detective, Adam Dalgleish. And yet, finally, Ohayon is the more compelling character, perhaps because his own vulnerabilities are more apparent and especially because he must conduct his investigations and live his life in the cauldron of passion and emotion that is contemporary Israel. This series will be sorely missed by crime-fiction readers everywhere. Bill Ott
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About this edition

• Publisher: Harper
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0060852933
• ISBN 13: 9780060852931
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 400