Raisins and Almonds

Raisins and Almonds by Kerry Greenwood (©2002; US edition 2007) 207 pages

In this novel set in the late 1920s, Phryne Fisher, a young Australian detective, is asked to investigate the murder of a man who died in a bookshop. The woman who owns the shop, Sylvia Lee, has been arrested, mostly because she seemed too calm when handling the aftermath of her customer's death. Ben Abrahams, her rich Jewish landlord, also the father of a young man Phryne currently has her appetite set on, has asked Phryne to solve the murder.

The dead man was Jewish, and in his wallet were several letters in a different language, plus scraps of parchment with unusual drawings. Phryne, her beau Simon, and much of her household get into sorting out the facts. Phryne meets a cantankerous Rabbi, as well as several young men in the Jewish community who seem to be withholding information that could help solve the case, even as Phryne's knowledge of the Jewish religion increases and issues of Zionism are hashed out.

I especially enjoyed this book since I recently finished watching all three seasons of the "Miss Fisher Murder Mysteries" on dvd, based roughly on Greenwood's books.

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City of Secrets

City of Secrets by Stewart O'Nan, 194 pages.
O'Nan's sixteenth (?) novel takes place in post-World War II Jerusalem. Brand, a Latvian Jew who feels that he "accidentally" survived the Holocaust, after having been a prisoner of the Russians, then the Nazis, and then Russians again, has made it to Palestine with an assumed identity. He is working for Haganah, a Jewish paramilitary / resistance force has just put aside its differences with other like-minded groups, such as Irgun, to drive the British out of Palestine and form a Jewish state. But Brand is not sure how he feels about all of this. He is haunted by those he lost in the war, and haunted by the sense that he is not the man he used to think he was. When one of the members of his clandestine cell is betrayed, and Brand finds that standing by, doing nothing to save the man (not quite a friend, but almost) who is accused of the betrayal, is sickeningly reminiscent of his time in the camps.
An affecting, sad novel.

Return to Centro Historico: a Mexican Jew Looks for His Roots / Ilan Stavans 154 p.

Stavans is professor of Latin American and Latino Culture at Amherst.  He's published a lot of nonfiction and some fiction as well, none of which I've read, which I'm sure makes me a poor evaluator of his work.  This is an attractively-made book, full of black and white photos of people and buildings from the old Mexico City neighborhood of Centro Historico.  The material itself is interesting, but Stavans' vague, meandering style was not engaging.  Stavans never fully plumbs his personal story or that of his wider community enough to satisfy.  A further irritant were the frequent typos - the book looked high-quality but there was some editorial skimping, clearly.