A Death in Jerusalem is Jonathan Dunsky’s seventh novel featuring Adam Lapid. It opens in January 1952 in Jerusalem, when Lapid marches on the Knesset to protest a proposed law allowing Israel to negotiate directly with West German about Holocaust … Continue reading A Death in Jerusalem | Book Review
The Auschwitz Detective is Jonathan Dunsky’s sixth murder mystery featuring Adam Lapid. (I reviewed the previous novels here, here, here, here, and here; along with a Lapid short story here.) Whereas those mysteries were set in Tel Aviv in the … Continue reading The Auschwitz Detective | Book Review
A Deadly Act begins with a famous Israel actress, permanently disabled by a car accident, revealing who murdered a colleague five years earlier. At least she thinks she knows. She doesn’t have proof, however—only circumstantial evidence and a woman’s intuition. … Continue reading A Deadly Act | Book Review
Hilda Lipkind is an unlucky woman. Seven months pregnant–after three miscarriages–she is worried that her husband David is cheating on her. So, she hires Adam Lapid to track down David’s paramour. The truth, however, is more complex and results in tragedy. The Unlucky Woman is a short story, not a novel, and a quick read. While I am a fan of the Adam Lapid mysteries, set in post-Independence Tel Aviv, I didn’t enjoy this story as much as I enjoyed the previous novels, hence the three-star rating. Book Reviewed Jonathan Dunsky, The Unlucky Woman: An Adam Lapid Short Story (Self-published, 2018). … Continue reading The Unlucky Woman | Book Review
A Debt of Death begins with Adam Lapid looking at his friend’s body in a Tel Aviv gutter. A friend who helped him survive Auschwitz. A friend whom he worries he might’ve gotten killed. This is the fourth installment in Jonathan Dunsky’s series featuring Israeli private investigator Adam Lapid. Almost no one escapes suspicion in this hardboiled tale mixing love, obligation, hope, despair, counterfeiting, the black market, and murder. And just when you think Lapid has collared the perpetrator, he reveals a new layer to the mystery. To my mind, this is the best of the Adam Lapid mysteries published so … Continue reading A Debt of Death | Book Review
When a man greets Adam Lapid on the streets of Tel Aviv, Lapid recognizes him as a fellow prisoner at Auschwitz named Yosef Kaplon. A few days later, Kaplon slits his wrists and a friend asks Lapid to figure out why. His investigation opens a window on Holocaust survivors, collaboration, and vengeance. Before the 1961 Adolf Eichmann trial, many Israelis poorly understood the experience of European Jews who had survived the Shoah, and the survivors rarely spoke about their experiences. Some Israelis—sabras, “natives”—felt that European Jews had been too weak and compliant in the face of oppression. The “new Zionist … Continue reading The Auschwitz Violinist | Book Review
“I knew he was an Arab the moment I saw him.” With these words, Jonathan Dunsky opens The Dead Sister, the second in a series of mysteries featuring Adam Lapid. They are pregnant with meaning, given that the story takes place in Tel Aviv in October 1949. On May 14, 1948, Israel had declared independence. The next day, five Arab nations declared war on Israel, vowing to fight with and on behalf of Palestinian Arabs in order to erase the Jewish state. A U.N.-sponsored armistice ended the war on March 10, 1949. In the aftermath of the war, approximately 700,000 … Continue reading The Dead Sister | Book Review
Ten Years Gone brings together three things I love: Israel, mystery, and sequels. It is the first of four novels by Jonathan Dunsky featuring Adam Lapid, a private detective in post-Independence Tel Aviv. (By first, I mean that the events it narrates come first in the series. It was actually written third.) Having completed it, I’m already on to the next novel, The Dead Sister. Lapid was a Jewish police detective in Hungary before World War II. His wife and children didn’t survive Auschwitz, but he did. After the Allies liberated Buchenwald, he stayed in Europe for a time, hunting … Continue reading Ten Years Gone | Book Review
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