Bethlehem Road Murder
A Michael Ohayon Mystery

By Batya Gur

  
    Batya Gur has an excellent reputation as a writer of murder mysteries, and I would think that most of them have taken place in or near her home country, which is very proper for her to do. This book was translated to English and in some cases; the names of the characters were easily mixed up in the beginning. I had to go back and forth to keep them straight for the first few chapters, but soon found them easy to identify.

     The Detective, Michael Ohayon is a man possessed with his own demons about his recently dissolved marriage and his child, and other things that bother and haunt him. Along the way, he starts to feel an attachment to an old, long-forgotten love. He has to solve a murder where the victim has been horribly disfigured. The people involved are all becoming targets and guilt-ridden messengers who may or may not be able to help him for their own fears and inadequacies. This book gives a startling look into the mysteries of Jerusalem and the surrounding areas of the Arab Quarter. It also deals with customs, fears and problems in the settling of the country and how things are handled in the ways of the old Jewish and Yiddish, and why some of those things lead to the actual crime. If you want to understand a bit more about the laws and biases of the Middle East, read this book, it will make you see a different side of the story.

     Bethlehem Road Murder is a well-written, very articulate suspenseful mystery. The places that are mentioned and the ways of the people are viewed as strangers in the beginning, who soon become friends and real people. What more is there to say, but that it is a must read, if you want to be taken to another realm of reality.

    A thought-provoking book, that stirs the emotions and makes the reader more open minded to the possibilities around them. The world is the whole world and people are mostly alike in their needs and thoughts.