Bethlehem Road Murder : A Michael Ohayon Mystery

Rating:
Summary: "You think you know someone...then you discover black holes."
Review: Setting her novel in an ethnically mixed neighborhood of Jerusalem, Israeli novelist Batya Gur continues the career of Chief Superintendent Michael Ohayon, formerly a historian, now a police investigator. In this fifth book in the series, Michael Ohayon investigates a particularly gory murder. An apparently beautiful young woman has been murdered in the attic of a house undergoing renovations, her face beaten to a pulp. No one knows how she might have been lured to such a place or why she might have been murdered.

Zahara Bashari, the victim, has been developing a small museum "for the splendor of Yemenite culture" in the basement of a local synagogue. Complex political issues exist between the Yemenites, known as the Mizrahis, and the Ashkenazis (Russian Jews), and Zahara believes that the Ashkenazim want to wipe out everything that distinguishes the Yemenite Jews. Furthermore, in the 1950s, Yemenite babies were kidnapped from their parents and given to others to raise, and Zahara wants to find out more about this period and what might have happened to one of her own kin.

The investigation is centered on the neighborhood, where Zahara's parents and their next door neighbors have not spoken for years. Nessia, a lonely, young girl with no friends, idolizes Zahara and follows her movements in the neighborhood, collecting "souvenirs" of Zahara's life, and looking for some sort of recognition-until she, too, disappears. Zahara's personal life proves to be complex, and her previously unknown ownership of an apartment and substantial savings account prove particularly worrisome.

The rivalries and tensions within the neighborhood and the police reflect all aspects of society and all political and social movements. Though Ohayon is a moderate in his views toward Arabs, Danny Balilty, deputy commander of the intelligence division, is a hard-liner. Within the neighborhood, however, residents work with and hire Arab contractors, some have friends who are Arabs, and some express annoyance at the strict measures imposed by their government to prohibit the work of Arabs except under certain circumstances.

Though the novel is filled with information about a unique way of life, the mystery is not always easy to follow. Pronoun references are sometimes unclear, the translation is occasionally awkward, and digressions slow down the action. Ohayon's dissertation on love during his courtship, for example, wanders on too long and lessens the tension. Still, author Batya Gur has some good psychological insights into character, especially of the fat, young girl Nessia, and Gur's ability to juggle innumerable characters and plot ideas is admirable. (3.5 stars) Mary Whipple