Criminal Kabbalah: An Intriguing Anthology of Jewish Mystery & Detective Fiction

by Lawrence W. Raphael

An intriguing Anthology of Jewish Mystery & Detective Fiction

Terence Ball, The Banality of Evil

Sandra Levy Ceren, Silver Is Better Than Gold

Martin S. Cohen, Death Has Beckoned

Richard Fliegel, The Golem of Bronx Park East

Michael A. Kahn, Truth in a Plain Brown Wrapper

Stuart M. Kaminsky, The Tenth Man

Rochelle Krich, Bitter Waters

Ronald Levitsky, Thy Brother's Bloods

Lev Raphael, Your Papers, Please

Shelley Singer, Reconciling Howard

Janice Steinberg, Hospitality in a Dry Country

Batya Swift Yasgur, Without a Trace

All-new stories from twelve of today's masters of mystery and detective fiction--sure to delight mystery buffs of all faith traditions, and fans of the award-winning Mystery Midrash: An Anthology of Jewish Mystery & Detective Fiction.

Genres: Jewish, Mystery, Short Stories

288 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

Reviews

[Shira Glassman]

I did not enjoy this in the way that I enjoyed the earlier volume, Mystery Midrash: An Anthology of Jewish Mystery & Detective Fiction. Most of the stories are far more literary than genre, and in a depressing rather than in a beautiful way. Plus there are stories with protagonists who kill a gay man or a wife who loved him, which, okay, fine, it's a crime story, but I'm into mysteries more than I am crime stories. Plus, the very first story was weirdly ableist.

[David Campton · Rating 5 out of 5]

A superb anthology of short mystery stories by Jewish authors and largely set in American Jewish communities giving them a sense of otherness to a gentile like me. The one exception to the American setting was a rendering of the story of Deborah, the ancient Jewish judge, retold as a detective story with the murdered general Sisera's mother as the detective... it had a midrashic quality to it that means I will never think of the story in the same way again. This collection deserves a wider readership than its particular genre, or its cover will solicit, indeed I was given it over 7 years ago an have only now read it. I am now however going to seek out another anthology that this editor has compiled...

[Philip S · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting stories that combined crimes with Jewish Culture - took me too long to complete but I think I'll eventually try the previous anthology of similar stories as it was recommended as being even better.

[Alex Maslow · Rating 4 out of 5]

Most stories are good, a few are great. Overall not as good a collection as Wandering Stars

[Bonnie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Gave up - stories were more slice of life than detective fiction, and they were kind of depressing.

[Dan · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to like this a lot more than I did, and kept hoping, story after story, that it would get better. The problem is, there wasn't a single story with an actual mystery, nor did all of them involve detectives. Basically, a series of crime stories, some from the detective's point of view, some from the criminal's point of view, but not one of them had any suspense - they just plodded through, in sequence, a series of events that led to either a crime or the "solving" of a crime, though I use solving loosely, since all that happened in each that involved a resolution was that whomever was investigating simply looked at the evidence, which in each case pointed clearly to a criminal, with no deductions needed. Kind of a yawn.

[Deb · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was a lot of fun, with two very surprising stories (I won't spoil it for others)!

[Kristen · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was just so-so.