Angel of Death

Some things are uglier than homicide - and ultimately as dangerous. For Barry Lewis, a Los Angeles attorney famous for handling controversial cases, danger comes in the form of a note on his front door: "The Angel of Death spared your forefathers - will he spare you?" To LAPD detective Jessie Drake, the message is as ominous as the red paint smeared across Lewis's doorposts and the Star of David scrawled across his door. Is this threat intended only for Lewis, or for the entire Jewish community? Lewis, Jessie soon learns, is everyone's enemy. Especially now that he's representing a group of neo-Nazis, Holocaust deniers, and skinheads who want to parade through two predominantly Jewish neighborhoods on Hitler's birthday. The Jewish community, enraged, is preparing for a confrontation. Lewis - who is the son of Holocaust survivors and does not sympathize with any hate groups - is determined to defend his clients' First Amendment rights. But at what cost? How will the police maintain public order? How many lives are at stake? With the date of the parade looming before her, Jessie intensifies her investigation and starts to examine her own beliefs, her own prejudices, her own feelings towards a historical event that snuffed out the lives of millions of innocent people. Hate suddenly turns to homicide. As Jessie desperately searches for leads among extremists of all stripes, she'll uncover revelation after revelation: about the case, about her city, about herself. Meanwhile, passions are rising. Violence threatens to erupt again. And the "angel of death" hovers nearby...

Anti-Semitism on the streets of L.A. draws homicide detective Jessica Drake, seen last in Fair Game, into disturbing investigations of both hate crimes and her own history. Attorney Barry Lewis, the son of Holocaust survivors, is fighting for White Alliance's right to march on Hitler's birthday, and he is paying the price-he and his wife are ostracized, he receives hate mail and calls and finds a blood-red Star of David and a death threat on his front door. Jessica grumbles about this corpseless case but, having Jewish relatives she has never met, becomes intrigued by what she learns about the Jewish community as she probes its members, including gentle Ezra Nathanson, his radical brother Joel Ben-Natan, and Barry's wife and parents-all of whom seem to have something to hide. After the parade, Barry tackles an even more controversial assignment and Jessica's work intensifies: the case finally gets its corpse. By subordinating mystery to message, Krich sacrifices the suspense that drove her earlier works, including Where's Mommy Now, but she offers her message in a creative way, and Jessica, other than taking a brainless risk to set up the finale, makes an engaging companion. Author tour.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

This year, April 20 is not only Hitler's birthday but Holocaust Remembrance Day--and what better way for neo-Nazis and Holocaust deniers to celebrate than to parade through the Jewish suburbs of L.A.? Not everybody agrees, however: Barry Lewis, the lawyer who's defending the White Alliance's right to march, has been getting vituperative phone calls and hate mail from the Jewish community (his own father denounces him), and somebody's painted a Star of David on his front door. Matters only go from bad to worse after the parade, when a Holocaust survivor has a fatal stroke after being shoved by White Alliance organizer Roy Benning, and Lewis is pressured to defend Benning against criminal charges. With so many factions (Lewis's family, the deniers and supremacists, and organizations ranging from the ACLU to the Shield of Jewish Protectors) tensely watching each other, the scene is set for some tough debate--until Lewis is blown up by a car bomb. Other principals in the case are threatened with similar treatment (``Prepare for the Angel of Death'') and meet fates neatly foretold by a well-known Jewish prayer. Eventually, the furious energy Krich has poured into her explosive conflict abates, leaving only Detective Jessica Drake's emotional reaction to the news of her own Jewish roots and a routine pattern-murder story surprisingly reminiscent of Fair Game (1993). Though the contenders never miss a chance for partisan posturing, Krich keeps her debate at the boiling point for 200 pages until the inevitable violence simplifies the issues and the story settles into a heartfelt lecture about anti-Semitism. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Like her colleague, popular mystery writer Faye Kellerman, Krich uses her Jewishness as a rich and integral part of her novels' plots. Unlike Kellerman's Rina Lazarus, however, Krich's detective, Jessie Drake, is unaware of her own Jewish heritage until the LAPD assigns her to investigate a death threat against lawyer Barry Lewis. Although he's the son of concentration camp survivors, Lewis has agreed to defend the right of a neo-Nazi group to demonstrate in a Jewish neighborhood, and his family and friends are furious. What no one can guess is how violent the reaction to the situation will be, but even Jessie is stunned when the threats against Lewis turn into murder. Determined to find the killer whose crime was obviously fired by hatred and intolerance, Jessie is forced to confront some shocking surprises, not only about the murderer, but also about herself. This novel, well written, with an intriguing plot, offers both a good mystery and some provocative insights into the Jewish tradition and the effects of prejudice, hate, and fear. Emily Melton