Invisible City

Rebekah Roberts #1

by Julia Dahl

A finalist for the Edgar and Mary Higgins Clark Awards, in her riveting debut Invisible City, journalist Julia Dahl introduces a compelling new character in search of the truth about a murder and an understanding of her own heritage.

Just months after Rebekah Roberts was born, her mother, an Hasidic Jew from Brooklyn, abandoned her Christian boyfriend and newborn baby to return to her religion. Neither Rebekah nor her father have heard from her since. Now a recent college graduate, Rebekah has moved to New York City to follow her dream of becoming a big-city reporter. But she's also drawn to the idea of being closer to her mother, who might still be living in the Hasidic community in Brooklyn.

Then Rebekah is called to cover the story of a murdered Hasidic woman. Rebekah's shocked to learn that, because of the NYPD's habit of kowtowing to the powerful ultra-Orthodox community, not only will the woman be buried without an autopsy, her killer may get away with murder. Rebekah can't let the story end there. But getting to the truth won't be easy--even as she immerses herself in the cloistered world where her mother grew up, it's clear that she's not welcome, and everyone she meets has a secret to keep from an outsider.

Genres: Mystery, Fiction, Audiobook, Mystery Thriller, Jewish, Crime, New York

304 pages, Hardcover

First published May 6, 2014

About the author

Julia Dahl was born and raised in Fresno, California and currently lives in New York's Hudson Valley with her husband and son.

Dahl began her career as a journalist working as a fact-checker at Entertainment Weekly. Since then, she has been an editor at Marie Claire, a freelance reporter at the New York Post, the deputy managing editor of The Crime Report, and a crime and justice reporter for CBS News.

She now teaches journalism at NYU.

Dahl's first novel, INVISIBLE CITY, was a finalist for the Edgar Award for Best First Novel, and won the Barry Award, the Shamus Award, and the Macavity Award for Best First Novel. INVISIBLE CITY named one of the Boston Globe's Best Books of 2014, and has been translated into eight languages.

Reviews

[M · Rating 1 out of 5]

One of my favorite lines from a movie what I have since forgotten goes something like this:
'I know you're a reporter. But you were once a human being.'
This line kept coming back to me as I read the very unfortunate Invisible City, a gritty murder mystery that I would not have wasted my time on, but for the tie in with the Hasidic community, a distant relative to me as an Orthodox Jew, and a strong desire to rip this book to shreds upon completing it.
IC is about a young woman named Rebekah (funky spelling to de-Jewify herself - kind of as effective as Nathaniel Hathorne adding a 'w') who is a reporter for a NY rag (think Post but somehow pretentious, not sure how she pulled that off) that is a glorified tabloid without the glory. Rebekah has a lot of emotional baggage - her former Hasid mom ran off with her Christian dad back when mom was a teen, only to then, after giving birth, decide that she wanted out of that too. Rebekah hates all things Hasidic, though she knows precious little about it, for, she feels, causing the abandonment. This all becomes important when Rebekah is covering a grisly crime scene - a woman's body is found in a crane among rubble - and she soon learns that the victim (handily named Rivka, Hebrew of Rebekah) herself was Hasidic. Just like mom!
What ensues is a ridiculous cat and mouse game laced with emotional drama as Rebekah becomes further embroiled in the grisly case while working out her mom issues. While the plot had potential, here were the issues:
1. The writing. UGH. Not at ALL surprisingly, the author is herself a journalist, which explains the excessive details of the craft as well as the really cruddy writing. Journalism is not fiction, or at least, it's not the good kind. This read like someone who had never herself read anything better than the Post (one example though I could quote the whole book: "Tony is a guy I've been hooking up with [the author continuously does this, dropping names then devoting a paragraph of expository info. I'm pretty sure this was covered in Creative Writing 101 but not, perhaps, journalism school). He's very much not Iris's type, but I like him. Iris likes metrosexuals. The guy she's sort of seeing now has highlights and the jawline of a Roman statue. Tony is very not metro sexual."
See Spot run, etc. This was rather painful and pretty much sums up the book in its entirety. This book was a classic example of not only how wrong it is to think that journalism = writing, but that writing about your craft is a BAD idea. No one else will care about it the way you do and you will fill PAGES with details about your job. Like we care. And while much of her information was, actually, accurate, the 'info dump' school of writing that has dialogue sounding more like cut and paste from Wikipedia really doesn't enhance a read.
2. The treatment of the Hasidic community. Ok, now, I KNOW that there are problems in the H community (just as any other) and that many of the problems cited here are in fact present if not at times dominant. And I know that if one of my tribe members were trash talking the H's I'd be right there. But.
I take issue with the protagonist saying 'There were Jews in the store. I could tell because of their sidecurls and black hats.' Um hello? JEWS? Seriously? She does this a lot, along with many other broad sweeping statements that were often ignorant if not flat out dangerous. I found it ironic, too, that while Hasids were called horrible names for not speaking to the reporters, at no point did the reporter realize that coming to a mourner's house THE DAY a close relative turns up dead, let alone on Sabbath, to ask a barrage of questions that are none of her business, actually, to me, paints you as the (insert expletive here). I have to say that what this book convinced me of was not the issues in the Hasidic community but in the world of journalism. Hunting for a scoop was worth lying for and putting people's lives and privacy at risk, and the best part was then this was spun as noble! Because, you know, truth and justice and all that jazz, as they misquote people left and right.
3. The plot. This was not suspenseful, or believable, or exciting. Partly, I am sure, due to a rather flat narrator who was not likable or even interesting enough to be unlikable, and ditto for her cast of stupid characters. When we get to the big reveal, the protagonist seems about as thrilled as I was, which is to say, sounding like the same cardboard cut out she had been the whole time.
The novel was written with very obvious intent for a sequel, which would only interest me if in some way the above issues were redeemed. I did appreciate the throwaway page or two that did token lipservice to what is NOT evil about the Hasidic community, but for the most part this novel only tried to reinforce pre-existing stereotypes and not, to me, doing much more than the same with the bottom feeding journalist protagonist.

[Kaceey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Award winning debut novel from Julia Dahl. Takes place in New York where the main character Rebekah Roberts is a contract journalist for a city newspaper. Covering her latest story of a woman's body found in a junkyard in Brooklyn, she comes into contact with a closed religious community largely populated by Hassidic Jews.
The author delves into this closed culture to give a closer view of a segregated community that isn't well known or seen. This book reminded me of Linda Castillo's books highlighting the Amish culture. (Another closed religious community that shuns the outside world.)
As Rebekah follows the leads for her story, her personal life intersects with the Jewish community and questions about her past and family history come to light.
A slow start that picked up speed half way through and I found myself completely caught up in the story. All in all it was a really good read. A little culture mixed into a 'who done it' that has you guessing till the end.
I am looking forward to reading the next book in this series.

[Rachel · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very quick & easy - I read it in 3 days. It was an interesting, intriguing murder mystery but I was uncomfortable with how the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community in Borough Park was portrayed. Everyone was either mentally ill, protecting a family member who was mentally ill, or trying to escape from the community. The ending totally left me hanging and she didn't bring any closure to Rebekah's relationship with her boyfriend Tony. There's probably a sequel in the works . . .

[AH · Rating 4 out of 5]

Initial Thoughts: So I picked up this book around lunchtime and finished it before dinner. This book deals with a murder investigation in NYC's Hasidic community. Rebekah Roberts is assigned to investigate the murder for her newspaper and she uncovers quite a lot of interesting tidbits. The story is told from Rebekah's point of view and the story kept me enthralled throughout. Rebekah's voice and the author's attention to details made the story feel very much an authentic depiction of the Hasidic community.

The Review:
Invisible City offers a fascinating glimpse into the insular Hasidic Jewish community of New York City. When a Hasidic woman is found murdered, Rebekah Roberts is sent to cover case for her newspaper. Rebekah’s Jewish heritage allows her access to the community that no other reporter has. Soon, Rebekah discovers more than she expects.

I literally devoured this book in one sitting. I could not put it down. Invisible City is a change from my usual genres of science fiction, urban fantasy, and the like so I was surprised that it held my interest. I think that one of the things that attracted me to this book was the fact that I really liked Rebekah’s character. She was easy to relate to, and all she wanted was to find the truth. I also liked the amount of research that this author put into her story. Oftentimes it seems that certain groups are not represented well in the press. I found her depiction of the Hasidic community to be quite accurate.

Invisible City touches upon many themes: big city corruption and cover ups, social issues, even mental health issues are addressed in this book. It’s not easy living in an insular community such as the Hasidic community. Occasionally, people want to leave and I was fascinated by the home near Coney Island.

Part of the attraction of this story is that the main character’s mother was part of the Hasidic community. The reader feels a sense of solidarity with Rebekah as she looks for clues to find her mother.

Invisible City was a thoroughly enjoyable read and I highly recommend this book.


Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for a review copy of this book.

Review posted on Badass Book Reviews. Check it out!

[Elaine · Rating 2 out of 5]

Just not good. The hook for this little mystery is that our heroine, an annoyingly feckless girl reporter, is the daughter of a Hasidic mother who abandoned her as an infant and returned to the fold. Now, our gal, Rebekah, writing as a stringer for the bastard child of the NY Post and the NY Times, the "Trib", finds herself living in Gowanus (my hood!) and investigating the murderous doings of NY's Hasidim.

Two big problems here for me: One, she writes about Hasidim (who she frequently confuses with "Jews" - as in, Rebekah saw "two Jews" in a convenience store) as if they were zoo animals, or cartoon characters or both. The narrator's cartoonish accents didn't help. Rebekah despite having lived in New York for more than a minute seems stunned by everything the Hasidim do - what? They keep the Sabbath?! What? The women must dress modestly and cover their hair?! One might think she'd never ridden the subway. Lots of prurient explication, and sinister overtones, but little attempt to make any of the Ultra Orthodox real characters or at all sympathetic. So it just reads as Jew-sploitation. I'm rather secular myself, but I don't think any member of any ethnic group could be comfortable with quite so much open-mouthed gawping.

Second, as other reviewers have noticed, Rebekah is just a terrible reporter. Although the book is bogged down at the beginning with a lot of detail about how stringers work, Rebekah has zero credibility as an actual reporter. She never gets anyone's last name, she forgets to write down critical information, and spends a lot of time telling her editor, "Oh sorry." Less Lois Lane than the Barbie who says "reporting is hard"! I get that she's supposed to be a cub reporter, but no one would get a coveted New York daily job without knowing that you need to get names. And take notes.

Oy gevalt! At least it was brief.

[Jenifer Jacobs · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't think I have finished an audiobook so quickly (less than 24 hours) in a very long time. I absolutely loved the main character, and the writing is terrific. The story, a mystery, encompasses themes of attachment, abandonment, journalism, ethics, mental illness, and how a tight-knit religious community can inadvertently impede necessary outside interventions. The last 13 minutes of audio was a question and answer with the author that was also fantastic. I am on hold for the next book from the library but am not sure how I will wait...

[Ivonne Rovira · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rebekah Roberts knows that nothing about Rivka Mendelssohn’s death makes sense. Not that a Hasidic woman would be found dead, completely nude, at a scrapyard owned by her husband’s family. Not that her head was recently shaved. Not that her sister-in-law says the devoted mother of four had been missing for days before Rivka’s body was discovered, but no one had reported her as missing. Not that, despite obvious signs that Rivka was beaten to death, the NYPD handed the body over to the funeral home without an autopsy. Not that Yakov, Rivka’s young son, has been told that his mother had been sick when he could see that wasn’t true. Nothing makes sense.

Twenty-two-year-old Rebekah (coincidentally, the English translation of Rivka from Yiddish) had a Hasidic mother (and a Methodist father); however, as her mother Aviva Kagan abandoned the family when Rebekah was a baby, she knows less about Hasidim and Yiddish than this shiksa who grew up in Miami and Miami Beach. But the Hasidic women, who knew Rebekah’s mother, consider her a Jew and trust her, whereas they don’t trust the police. Or their own male leaders. And rightly so.

Julia Dahl has penned an engrossing page-turner that provides an education into Brooklyn’s insular Hasidic community. I had never heard of her, and Dahl definitely deserves to be a household name. Imagine my delight in discovering Dahl has written two sequels! Highly recommended.

[Jaylia3 · Rating 5 out of 5]

The varied elements of this novel combine to make it both a compelling personal story and a suspenseful mystery. These include a homicide in an insular religious community that to some extent operates under its own laws and a complexly drawn main character with a troubled family history and a job that has her running all over the city inserting herself in other people’s lives. Invisible City by Julia Dahl had me from its premise and did not disappoint as I read. I was so drawn to it I found myself picking it up even when I only had a few minutes to spare.

After graduating with a journalism degree, Rebekah Roberts moved from Florida to New York City to look for a job in her field and possibly be near her mother, who she hasn’t seen since she was a baby. Rebekah suspects her mother may be living in the Brooklyn Hasidic community where her mother grew up, but she doesn’t actually know. As a young woman Rebekah’s mother had a stormy period of questioning, during which she fled the Hasidic community and married, but she left her Christian husband and their baby not long after Rebekah was born and neither husband nor daughter has heard from her since. Unsurprisingly, Rebekah has abandonment issues that surface as acute anxiety.

Rebekah did find work with a newspaper, but so far she’s scarcely written a word of copy. Instead she’s on call, chasing after newsworthy events to gather information and quotes that other writers turn into articles, and that’s how she’s on the scene when the body of a murdered Hasidic woman is found in a junkyard. At the request of the woman’s husband, a powerful man in the Hasidic community, police have scaled down the investigation and the woman's body is buried without an autopsy, raising all kinds of questions in Rebekah’s mind that, because of her mother’s background, feel personal to her as well as professional. Following the threads of the story takes Rebekah into the heart of the Hasidic community, where she is both an outsider and to some degree an insider, and may lead to a career advancing breakthrough article or bring her closer, in understanding if not in person, to her as yet undiscovered mother.

Coincidence might be a little overused in the plot, but the story had me in its grips enough that I hardly cared. I don’t know a lot about Hasidic life so I can’t say how accurate the portrayal in this book is, but the community is presented in an intimate but sympathetic light, with people of various levels of belief treated by the author with respect. This is the first of a series and I will certainly seek out the next book, though it’s hard to imagine a more powerful story for Rebekah than this one. I look forward with some confidence to seeing what Julia Dahl comes up with to match it.

[reading is my hustle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Stories about insular religious communities are always a bit gutting while at the same time absorbing in their details. I quickly moved onto the second in this series Run You Down. Both are mysteries involving Hasidic communities in New York. Insular communities pose challenges for law enforcement- because they can vote. In large numbers. Also, the Hasid have their own police force called Shomrim. Add murder and a tenacious reporter to this equation and you have a perfect shit storm.

And what happens to those who are marginalized or otherwise do not fit in?

I look forward to the next book in this series. Julia Dahl is a Brooklyn-based journalist and has worked the crime scene. Like her heroine Rebekah Roberts, Julia Dahl also has a Jewish mom and a Christian dad. Rebekah's backstory and personal ties to the Hasid community is another compelling part to this series.

[Gwen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reread for mystery book club, 8.16.2016

Maybe my standards have changed since the last time I read this book, but I didn't find it as bad as I did 2 years ago. While the supporting characters seem poorly depicted, Dahl does an excellent job of characterizing Rebekah, a freshly minted journalist in her first full-time position. (The mystery is still not great and full of red herrings, and I'm not planning on reading more in the series, though.)

******************************

5.28.2014 review

Surprisingly boring and felt oddly cliched/stereotyped. The mystery ended rather abruptly with little explanation, and the characterization was overall very poor. However, I give Dahl credit for pretty accurately capturing the voice of a 23-year-old new journalist and getting a good feel for how the world works for the underpaid, freshly out of college New Yorkers.

[Maureen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Average - everything was average in this book: the character development, the plot, the writing. Average is being generous.

Intrepid girl reporter finds herself in "danger" in the big city. She is accompanied by the ubiquitous best fried and an extremely peripheral love interest [Insert the remainder of any other 'mystery' novel you have read here]. Nothing new to be found in these pages. This book is obviously setting up all the books that are going to be in this series. The only problem with that is this one is not interesting enough for me to want to read the rest of the series. Don't care if this girl finds her mother or why she left her as an infant. Add to the averageness, completely unnecessary tangents about the peripheral love interest's mother. Nothing really happens in this book until the last 40 pages and even that was pretty lame.

Now my shout out to Gillian Flynn. Girl, why would you add the cover blurb to this pap? You said, "An absolutely crackling, unputdownable mystery told by a narrator with one big, booming voice. I loved it." I cannot speak to your loving it - though again I really believe authors are paid a premium for writing these endorsements - but I can say, with authority, that there was zero crackling going on in this book and my experience of unputdownability was apparently the exact opposite of yours - I had to force myself to pick it UP in order to finish it. Shame on you for suckering those of us who have been reading your work LONG before Gone Girl made you famous! ~end rant~

I will not being reading anymore of this author's work in case that wasn't obvious.

[AdiTurbo · Rating 4 out of 5]

A mystery that takes you to the depths of a strange culture - that of ultra-orthodox Jews living in New York. It is a closed and secretive community that protects its own vehemently. In this case, it makes them try to cover up a murder of a young woman. A young freelance journalist with distant ties to the community is caught up in the story, and finds out more about her own family history on the way to solving the mystery and discovering the murderer. Believable and realistic, the novel sheds light on the complicated political connections between the city and the community, and about a culture even I, a Jewish woman myself, know very little about.

[Lori Elliott · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a very thoughtfully written debut novel!!! I learned so much about the Hasidic community which I previously knew nothing about!!! I really, really look forward to the next in this series!!! 4.5 stars!!!

[Penny · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent debut novel! Kudos Julia for a wonderful story and such a smooth read. I had a hard time putting it down. I definitely will read the rest of the books in this series! Thank you!!

[Jan Rice · Rating 4 out of 5]

The young heroine of Julia Dahl's new book, the first of a series, is in New York working as a stringer for a tabloid and trying to be a reporter, when she gets involved in investigating the murder of a Hasidic woman. Remembering Catch-22, she thinks,

Man is matter. Drop him out a window and he will fall. Set fire to him and he will burn. Something like that. I always remembered those lines. To me it felt like a carpe diem thing. Like, you've got this body, this life, and it's all you've got. But looking at Rivka Mendelssohn I think maybe he meant it more literally. Rivka Mendelssohn was a woman, and then, suddenly, she was a pile of meat and bones.

Unlike the character Rebekah Roberts, I didn't remember those lines. I guess I read Catch-22 sometime in the late sixties. Reading them, I took her word for what Joseph Heller wrote. Well, not quite; I did look it up. But in those words I heard also The Merchant of Venice.

Reading the New York Times review, nestled with several others of its genre, I took note, then forgot about it. That was back when it was warm. Then I chanced to turn up in her session at the Atlanta Jewish book festival. I hadn't remembered who she was but when it dawned on me I had to have it. It was a fast and pleasurable read.

I couldn't help comparing Rebekah here to "Reno" in Rachel Kushner's book The Flamethrowers, which I reviewed--also back when it was warm. They are both 22, both in New York (although in different times). I criticized Reno for not coming alive. Rebekah, in contrast, grows up. For example,

For years I hated my father as much as I hated my mother. And in some ways I still do, but now I also have sympathy for him. And respect for how he handled the situation. Twenty years old with a baby girl and a thoroughly appalled family can't have been easy, and he made it work for us. He might not have been as in touch with his actual emotions or, to some extent, reality, as I wish he was, but he's a good guy. To the core. And even at twenty-two years old I know that's rare. One parent who would protect you at all costs is more than a lot of people get.

Stopping hating your parents and even seeing some good in them--a sign of growing up! Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention that as teenagers her parents met and fell in love--her father, a Christian, and her mother, a rebellious runaway from the same New York Hasidic community where the murder has occurred in the current action. And her mother had then run away once again, returning to her religious community and deserting her father and her when Rebekah was six months old, 21+ years before.

Now you are going to say this is a stretch, but the development Rebekah sustains made me think of the protagonist of The Shipping News. Like him, her body image, originally amorphous, is revealed. Also she starts out playing at being a reporter, not really responsible for what happens, and ends up a for-real reporter and writer.

Just as that series about the Amish is not just for the Amish, and The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency is not only for Africans, this book isn't just for Jews. Rebekah's roots are modeled on those of the author, although the latter less dysfunctional; Julia Dahl has one Jewish and one Christian parent who are both religious, and so she speaks from overlapping worlds.

Since I'm on a little crime and detective kick, I've begun A Grave in Gaza, the second in the Omar Yussef Mystery series. I read the first one back in 2008 or 2009 and passed it on. The second has been waiting patiently on the shelf since then.

[Netta · Rating 3 out of 5]

כתבת צעירה שאמה נטשה אותה בינקותה לטובת הקהילה היהודית-חסידית ומאז לא יצרה עמה כל קשר, חוקרת פרשיית רצח מחרידה בקהילה החסידית המסוגרת בניו יורק ומנסה לחשוף את הסודות והשקרים, ובמקביל להילחם בשדים האישיים מעברה.
לא יצירת מופת, אבל ספר חביב ומעניין להעביר איתו את הזמן.

[Leslie · Rating 5 out of 5]

A terrific first book, with well-deserved wins and nominations for all the major awards in crime fiction. Rebekah Roberts is a young reporter determined to prove herself and earn a permanent job when she's assigned to cover the discovery of a woman's naked body in a scrap heap owned by a prominent leader of the Hasidic community in Brooklyn -- the community her own mother left when she was pregnant at 19 and returned to when Rebekah was only 6 months old. The community itself is the "invisible city," not seen to those outside it or to law enforcement. Rebekah's outsider-insider status allows her to investigate when others won't, and leads some members to open up to her. Her own sense of loss and internal conflict is palpable and beautifully portrayed. Loved the glimpses of a young reporter's life. Fast-paced and compelling, it kept me up too late reading -- always a good thing!

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rebekah Roberts is a stringer for a downmarket NYC rag. When a woman's naked body is discovered in the rubble of a building site, Rebekah happens to be the reporter given the story.

It has particular resonance for her. The dead woman is from Brooklyn's secretive Hasidim community. Rebekah's mother was from this same community: rebelling against its strict rules, she ran off to Florida with Rebekah's (Christian) dad, had Rebekah out of wedlock, then ran back home, deserting her lover and child. So Rebekah has a sort of reflexive hostility toward the community while at the same time being attracted to an exploration of it in hopes she might reveal clues as to what made her long-lost mom tick.

Rebekah muddles around in the case, not really doing any productive detecting and at the same time revealing herself to be a pretty incompetent reporter. In fact, her (pretty scanty) deductions lead basically nowhere, the murderer being revealed at the end not through any effort of hers but through one of those "I'm nuts! I'm bonkers! I'm both!" scenes in which the guilty party confesses everything while preparing to knock off the detective. Who's saved at the last moment. Of course.

I found Invisible City moderately entertaining, an easy enough way to pass the time. However, I decided I didn't much like Rebekah, which kind of put a damper on things; at the same time, though, I did like the character Saul Katz, a Hasidic ex-cop who takes Rebekah under his wing while also quietly using her to further his own agenda. But where I was really disappointed in the book concerned the very reason I'd picked it up in the first place: to learn more about the Hasidim. (Yes, I realize it's unfair to expect a mystery novel to be educational, but there ya go.) By the book's end I felt I'd been presented with a reasonable amount of information about the Hasidim, but at the same time I was still very much on the outside looking in. It's only in the last few pages, when a Hasidic patriarch who up 'til now has been portrayed as a monster opens up to reveal himself as someone far more benign, that I felt I was getting any real insight.

From the review quotes on the cover and from the awarda nominations the novel has received, I know that many others have been more enthused by Invisible City than I was. For me it was a perfectly okay crime novel, a good read in its modest way, but not the groundbreaker I'd been hoping for. It's beans on toast for breakfast rather than smoked salmon.

[Selena · Rating 2 out of 5]

There were things I liked about this book: the plot was interesting enough to keep reading, the look into the world of a sect of Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn.

There were things I didn't like about this book: the main character's overuse of seemingly random vulgarities. I am not a prude and I myself have been known to use foul language, but it seemed out of place. Also, the oddly thrown in sex scenes which really add nothing to the plot and seem a bit random. The look into the world of Hasidim was not what I'd hoped for, as it seemed for the most part they were portrayed in a negative light. The author really overused the world "like" in the dialogue, which I found a bit annoying. I don't like when people use it a lot when speaking and reading a book where they all use it was grating. I felt that Rebekah got easily annoyed. She stops talking to the guy she's seeing because he Googles her and is interested in her life? What? I guess I didn't find her to be very likable. Also, she didn't follow up on things. When Miriam refers to Rivka using a Yiddish word, Rebekah notes that she should ask Saul what it means (or, you know, she could Google it?), she never does. Of course that would've led to the mystery being solved a little quicker, but she is a reporter and I thought she was supposed to be thorough.

The ending was so abrupt. It sort of came out of nowhere and was wrapped up so quickly. Also, I was hoping for more details about Rebeckah's mother. I can only guess with the way the book ended that there will be more books featuring these characters?

I would read more books by this author, as I am curious about the mother's back story. I found this to be a quick read and if I had the time, I could've probably finished this in a day.

[Nichole · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is book #1 in the Rebekah Roberts series (2014-2017), and I finished it in only three days. I liked it. Invisible City is a semi-edgy murder tale set in New York City (kryptonite for me, a lover of any bleak East Coast setting). On a cold winter morning, young journalist Rebekah Roberts is sent out to cover a new case: the body of a young woman is found naked in a Brooklyn scrapyard. It turns out that the dead young woman was a Hasidic Jew, a disclosure that compels Rebekah, the abandoned daughter of an ultra-Orthodox Jewish woman, to further explore the case. Even though her dogged probes into this "invisible city" within-a-city, with its unbridled political power, odd clothing, fervent religious culture, and many secrets, will be dangerous for all caught in its crosshairs, Rebekah just can't stop. She won't stop. To this wounded young woman, justice is all that matters. Uncompromised justice for the victim(s) and her own longings (her deadbeat mother grew up in Hasidic Brooklyn) drive her to find answers from this community, no matter the cost. And the cost just might be her life.

Invisible City is a good story, even though the writing is not outstanding. To be fair, book #1 was Julia Dahl's debut novel (2014) in a three-book series. Her writing undoubtedly has improved over the years. I will read the two other installments to find out.

What I didn't like about the book was the explicit sex. The passages that over-described boyfriend Tony's "big c**k" action were crude and unnecessary; they nearly stopped my reading. This stuff brought 4 stars down to 3. I wrote earlier that I hope Dahl's other two books in the series read better. I still have high hopes.

3 stars

[Tellulah Darling · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Hasidic community has always fascinated me and I'm always up for a good mystery, so when I saw this book, I had to pick it up. It's a solid read. Good writing. The mystery may not be the most challenging, but it had enough interesting twists and turns to keep me going.

Mostly, I really enjoyed Rebekah's brush with her mother's community. The insights she took away from it both as a perspective on another culture and what it meant for her personally. Definitely recommend.

[Suzanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating view into the difficulty of uncovering crime hidden within the closed society of Hasidic NYC, and the hectic life of a tabloid newspaper stringer, all viewed through the anxious (and sometimes unreliable) eyes of a young reporter. First in a new mystery series.

[Martha · Rating 2 out of 5]

Folks have told me on a couple different occasions that I could/should write a book. I smile, say thank you and think to myself "just because I like writing, doesn't mean I could write a good book". This book lends itself to a different opinion: If this woman can get published and featured at my library's "express section". (Usually reserved for new books in high demand), I suppose I too could write a book.

That doesn't mean I would be a great author. Instead, it means that sometimes a ho hum author is given a lucky break and clueless readers such as myself stumble upon her book.

Yes, I could easily have returned the book to the library, unfinished. But, given it was a mystery, I had to skim my way through it, to see who did it. I needed that closure. Yet, even that was predictable and held no real detail at the end that made me think maybe I was being too harsh.

Criticisms: It seemed like at the beginning the author struggled to introduce the characters. Yes, Rebekah is a young college graduate working her first big girl job in New York City. As a tabloid journalist, she gets assigned a story involving the discovery of the body of a young woman, living in the very closed community of the ultra orthodox Jewish neighborhood. Sounds promising: But first the author needs to introduce us to her roommate, the boyfriend and even the boyfriend's buddy who works as a detective on the police force. Those introductions are choppy. The descriptions of her her hooking up with the bartender boyfriend bordered on crude. Rebekah suffers from anxiety, so instead of taking her meds, nope she heads home and smokes a little weed. Rebekah and her roommate are portrayed as young and a bit naive: Yet they are both college graduates, having landed semi decent new jobs in the highly competitive world of journalism. These side details just seemed inconsistent.

I also didn't care for the obvious efforts she made in setting the stage for follow up stories. A side story is Rebekah's relationship with her birth mom. No real resolution in this dilemma but by golly the ending held quite the cliff hanger, where it is so obvious the author was saving that element for her next story.

With so many good authors who have mastered the crime reporter mystery genre, this author needs to polish up her style if she wants to be included in their club.

[Kathy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Invisible City first caught my attention because of its focus on Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn. That it is a murder mystery, my favorite genre, sealed the deal for me to read it. Julia Dahl delves into the secret world of the Hasidic community of Borough Park in Brooklyn, where Orthodox Jews adhere to a style of life and set of rules from a long history of isolationism. Dahl does an excellent job of shedding light on how the mix of modern world and tradition can collide in untenable situations for some of those living within the cloistered confines of Hasidism.

Rebekah Roberts is a reporter for the New York Tribune, a stringer who is sent out to different assignments each day. She finds herself assigned to the location of a Brooklyn scrap yard, where a woman's body has been discovered among the scrap. It appears to be just a nondescript murder in a city where murder is ordinary fare. However, Rebekah soon learns that it is the body of a Hasidic Jew and the wife of the owner of the scrap yard who is dead, and that the victim is from the Jewish community of Borough Park, where Rebekah's mother was born and raised. Although Rebekah's mother left when Rebekah was not yet a year old, it stirs up feelings and connections that Rebekah can't ignore. When an ambulance from the Hasidic community takes the body away and the woman is buried without an autopsy, Rebekah realizes that there are unspoken agreements between the Hasidic community and the NYPD that might include covering up a murder. Rebekah decides, with some urging from a former friend of her parents, Saul, that Rivka Mendelssohn deserves more than a undignified end to her life and that secrets preventing justice must be revealed.

Invisible City is the start to a new series by Julia Dahl, and there are open-ended questions at the end of this first book leading into the next. This book provides a riveting murder mystery with an excellent set-up of characters and setting for a continuing story line. Rebekah's struggle with who she is, coming from a Christian father who raised her and an Orthodox Jewish mother who abandoned her to return to the Jewish community, is deftly laid out. The reader wants to know more, which is how a great series should begin.

[Lynn · Rating 1 out of 5]

Truly awful. Our supossedly plucky, smart, Jewish detective knows not one single thing about Hasidic jews, tho her mom is one. "what? the women shave their hair?" It was one shocker after another for our protagonist. on her trail to solve a homicide, she never learns to wear a coat in winter in NYC -- ohhh it's so cold out! and every time she finds out a clue, the stupid reader has to hear of it twice, first when she learns it and again when she write about it. Finally, why do all young women, even those raised in secluded Hasidic buroughs, speak like Valley girls? It's, like, too annoying.

[Susan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Highly readable crime drama with a New York grittiness about it. The main character, Rebekah Roberts, was interesting but I wasn’t sure how I felt about the portrayal of the Hasidic community in New York. It was interesting to learn some of the “behind the scenes “ of the community but I was curious if this was a fair assessment.

[D · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’ll start with the narrative of the book which I found to be gripping. It was well written and I wanted to know what happens next. It was also interesting to view a murder mystery from a journalistic perspective. I did not see the plot twist coming and my jaw was literally on the floor. That was well done. Now coming to the portrayal of insular communities, or one, as in the book - it did not feel the best to read. There is something to be said about how our faith, our communities, and our surroundings have the power to shape us. Even more so in case of insular communities. However, reducing an entire community to a certain set of characteristics is harmful and dangerous. I don’t know if it was intentional in a way to capture the main character’s prejudice, owing to her own past, or if it was simply the author’s ignorance but portraying a whole community as if either the people are suffering from some form of mental illness or they’re simply trying to escape because of how oppressed they are is a choice and one that rubs me the wrong way. Maybe I am reading it wrong, but the portrayal lacks sensitivity in my opinion.

[Nirit · Rating 3 out of 5]

ספר קצת מאכזב, בעיקר כי לסיפור המסגרת היה פוטנציאל ממש טוב. רבקה היא עיתונאית צעירה, בת לאמא יהודיה שברחה מהקהילה החסידית בבורו פארק(נ"י) ואב נוצרי. מיד לאחר לידתה של רבקה, האם נוטשת אותה וחוזרת אל הקהילה החסידית. במסגרת עבודתה העיתונאית רבקה נקלעת לרצח של אחת מנשות הקהילה, ומתפתה לחקור אותו, כמו גם לנסות להבין או להכיר את אמה. לכאורה זה נשמע סיפור מצויין עם המון קונפליקטיים אפשריים, ואפילו סיכוי לגילוי וגאולה אישית. בפועל, הכתיבה ככ מרושלת ולא נעימה לקריאה. הסופרת התעקשה להשתמש ביותר מדי ביטויים גסים ותיאורי סקס בלי שום צורך (לא מבחינת עיצוב הדמות וגם לא מבחינת העלילה). בשלב מסוים הצטערתי שהיא לא נתנה את הרעיון לסיפור הזה לסופר מוצלח ממנה, על מנת שיכתוב במקומה.
למה בכל זאת 3 כוכבים ולא 2? כי בסופו של דבר סיימתי את הספר יחסית מהר, הפרק האחרון היה מותח וטוב, והצלחתי לנחש מי הרוצח רק בשלב יחסית מאוחר של הסיפור ולא מהאמצע.
הבנתי שזה הספר הראשון בסדרת ספרים. לא חושבת שאטרח לקרוא את הבאים בתור.

[SuperWendy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Young (like, early 20s young - she's like, really young) heroine who works as a stringer for a tabloid newspaper in New York City gets sent to a crime scene at a scrap yard. The victim is a mother of four, a member of the ultra-orthodox Hasidic community. A stringer's job is to go where the newspaper tells you to, but the heroine is drawn to stay on the story in large part because her own mother is/was Hasidic, left the community to be with the heroine's father, and ultimately abandoned her partner and child to return to it. So our heroine has baggage and a history.

The mystery itself is quite good and the world building is fantastic. My one niggle here is the heroine, who is so young (I might have mentioned that already) and ergo isn't terribly good at her job. I mean, she makes some boneheaded errors early on, mostly due to inexperience. Realistic? Yes. Especially given her age and emotional baggage. Still, kind of annoying to read about. But I'm old and cranky and recognize that fact. I would have found the heroine amazingly relatable when I was in my early 20s.

Still, it's a good solid story and I'm interested in reading the next book in the series.

[amanda]

dnfed at page 34. what was this monstrosity