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notizhefte's review
4.0
Obwohl ich mindestens fünfhundertmal Avraham Avraham gehört habe, muß ich sagen: Eing guter Krimi, wenn auch nicht immer zielführend erzählt.
yario's review against another edition
1.0
aspires to be an intelligent crime novel. The protagonist-detective is depicted in-depth and convincingly, but the crime story and it's resolution is average.
octygon's review against another edition
challenging
dark
mysterious
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.75
deedee63's review against another edition
mysterious
fast-paced
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
rebleejen's review against another edition
4.0
Good detective story. At first I thought the end was being drawn out for no good reason, but then there was another twist, so it was okay--but then I thought it ended a bit abruptly. It looks like it's supposed to become a series. I would probably read the next book.
booksonhermind's review against another edition
3.0
She's Got Books on Her Mind
Avraham Avraham is an investigator who usually has to deal with mothers who want their daughters followed or class bullies to get reprimanded so when a new mother walks in telling him that her son is missing he thinks nothing of it. He think he ran away or will come back soon after a wild night partying because nothing ever really goes wrong where he lives. This time he is proven wrong. Racked with guilt he gets on the case as soon as he can to find the missing boy. He tries to make up for lost time but seems more frazzled than usual with this case. Meanwhile there is Ze'ev, the missing boy's neighbor and once English tutor, who seems to take a great interest in the case. He's a little more than suspicious when he starts wanting to see Avraham all the time to tell him the type of person Ofer really is. This is a mystery that will keep you questioning until the end: W hat really happened to Ofer Sharabi?
Avraham is supposed to be this great investigator so initially I thought he would have it all together. He dismisses this mother's fears that something horrible happened to her son which I can easily forgive him for because it was an obvious mistake. The thing about Avraham and all the characters were that they were the quiet, pensive type so any shake or disruption in how their world is startles them. Avraham seemed not to recover for most of the story because he felt so guilty for not taking the case so seriously in the beginning. I know that's not supposed to be the case based on something the book said later on but it feels that way. I like that Avraham was the quiet, pensive type like I think all the other characters were like too. It created this atmosphere of just... quiet tension. Tension when things didn't go a certain way. Again like the whole world turned upside down because things weren't how that character thought it would turn out.
Ze'ev was such a great character. When his part came around I made sure I paid attention. There were always moments with him where I'm surprised Avraham didn't turn around and say "Did you really just say that?" I mean he gave off definite crazy vibes. Him and his "relationship" with Ofer was all up in the air throughout the book. You think you know what he's about and what's going to happen but in the end you really don't. All I can tell you is that I felt like it was obvious he had something to do with Ofer's disappearance throughout the book. I felt like if I was there listening in or seeing what he was doing I would have stopped what I was doing, raised my eyebrow, and seriously doubt what type of person he was and what he had to do with Ofer's disappearance. The stuff he does or says... he's so suspicious! I mean WOW. This guy... How can you not question his motives?
So it definitely kept my attention. I really liked that this book was a translation from Hebrew. I liked that the book's main character, Avraham, referenced a couple of times about how come there wasn't any Hebrew crime novels or something to that affect. And here this book is. I really enjoyed the feel of the book and the intelligent way about it (in a good way). It kept me interested from start to finish and that's all you can really hope for in any book. I am so surprised by the number of surprises in this book which might not make sense but it is true. More accurately I am surprised by the twists because there oh so good twists people. They make me so happy it's crazy. It feels like they come out of left field or something. It makes you think.
I really wonder how this series is going to continue because it did have two POV's for this first book. One was an investigator and another was someone close to the person that everyone was looking for. Is the author planning on continuing with that theme or is it going to be based solely on the life of Avraham Avraham? Also, with that ending... What's going to happen with that!? Such a crazy ending. I absolutely loved it. I feel like the author might just leave it like that but then again it's like you can;t possibly leave it like that... I really enjoyed almost every aspect of this book. The feel of it, it's characters, and the intelligent way about it. It's just so good. I hope to continue on with this series and to read more books by this author.
Avraham Avraham is an investigator who usually has to deal with mothers who want their daughters followed or class bullies to get reprimanded so when a new mother walks in telling him that her son is missing he thinks nothing of it. He think he ran away or will come back soon after a wild night partying because nothing ever really goes wrong where he lives. This time he is proven wrong. Racked with guilt he gets on the case as soon as he can to find the missing boy. He tries to make up for lost time but seems more frazzled than usual with this case. Meanwhile there is Ze'ev, the missing boy's neighbor and once English tutor, who seems to take a great interest in the case. He's a little more than suspicious when he starts wanting to see Avraham all the time to tell him the type of person Ofer really is. This is a mystery that will keep you questioning until the end: W hat really happened to Ofer Sharabi?
Avraham is supposed to be this great investigator so initially I thought he would have it all together. He dismisses this mother's fears that something horrible happened to her son which I can easily forgive him for because it was an obvious mistake. The thing about Avraham and all the characters were that they were the quiet, pensive type so any shake or disruption in how their world is startles them. Avraham seemed not to recover for most of the story because he felt so guilty for not taking the case so seriously in the beginning. I know that's not supposed to be the case based on something the book said later on but it feels that way. I like that Avraham was the quiet, pensive type like I think all the other characters were like too. It created this atmosphere of just... quiet tension. Tension when things didn't go a certain way. Again like the whole world turned upside down because things weren't how that character thought it would turn out.
Ze'ev was such a great character. When his part came around I made sure I paid attention. There were always moments with him where I'm surprised Avraham didn't turn around and say "Did you really just say that?" I mean he gave off definite crazy vibes. Him and his "relationship" with Ofer was all up in the air throughout the book. You think you know what he's about and what's going to happen but in the end you really don't. All I can tell you is that I felt like it was obvious he had something to do with Ofer's disappearance throughout the book. I felt like if I was there listening in or seeing what he was doing I would have stopped what I was doing, raised my eyebrow, and seriously doubt what type of person he was and what he had to do with Ofer's disappearance. The stuff he does or says... he's so suspicious! I mean WOW. This guy... How can you not question his motives?
So it definitely kept my attention. I really liked that this book was a translation from Hebrew. I liked that the book's main character, Avraham, referenced a couple of times about how come there wasn't any Hebrew crime novels or something to that affect. And here this book is. I really enjoyed the feel of the book and the intelligent way about it (in a good way). It kept me interested from start to finish and that's all you can really hope for in any book. I am so surprised by the number of surprises in this book which might not make sense but it is true. More accurately I am surprised by the twists because there oh so good twists people. They make me so happy it's crazy. It feels like they come out of left field or something. It makes you think.
I really wonder how this series is going to continue because it did have two POV's for this first book. One was an investigator and another was someone close to the person that everyone was looking for. Is the author planning on continuing with that theme or is it going to be based solely on the life of Avraham Avraham? Also, with that ending... What's going to happen with that!? Such a crazy ending. I absolutely loved it. I feel like the author might just leave it like that but then again it's like you can;t possibly leave it like that... I really enjoyed almost every aspect of this book. The feel of it, it's characters, and the intelligent way about it. It's just so good. I hope to continue on with this series and to read more books by this author.
guiltyfeat's review against another edition
4.0
Odd coincidence. One day after ordering the first two books in this series, I met the author. I told him I was looking forward to reading his books and now that I have I'm happy that say that his debut is a cracker. Clearly self-aware our Israeli detective explains in the opening chapter why there is no history of Israeli crime fiction, "There's simply no mystery here. The explanation is always the simplest." What follows is a cerebral procedural that deliberately wrongfoots the reader more than once. Nothing is quite what it seems and nobody including the two POV characters is quite as instantly categorizable as they first appear. Properly good.
rosseroo's review against another edition
4.0
I'm always on the lookout for new international crime books, especially if they're from the Middle East, which is where I spent the first ten years of my life. This first book in a projected series is set in Holon, which is depicted as a rather drab southern suburb of Tel Aviv (I spent 7th grade living in the northern suburb of Herzilya). It introduces Israeli police detective Avraham Avraham, who is on duty when a woman comes in to report that her teenage son hasn't come home from school. This is a very traditional start to a story, one that calls to mind any number of books -- but almost immediately, the reader can see this is not going to fit neatly into our expectations of police procedurals. Avraham more or less dismisses the woman's concern, and she leaves without filing a report. She returns the next day, and only then does the investigation actually open -- the first instance of what will be many cases of the author messing with our expectations concerning chronology and pace.
Unlike the traditional missing persons thriller, the story here unfolds at a rather languid pace, punctuated with microbursts of activity. Even more disconcerting is that Avraham seems kind of confused about what to do and when to do it himself, repeatedly turning to his superior for advice. Despite being told indirectly that Avraham is held in high esteem, the reader will time and again find themselves questioning his competency. This is even woven in to a kind of meta-gag in the book, after Avraham quips that there are no Israeli mystery writers (which is itself not true at all), he receives an eerie phone call from the Shin Bet, who explain why: "The [reason] is that the police in Israel are responsible for trivial investigations that no one would bother reading about or writing a book about, and because most of the police investigators aren't particularly bright. The Shin Bet handles the most important investigations, and no one knows anything about us."
As Avraham stumbles through the investigation (repeatedly being upstaged by a younger, more aggressive colleague assigned to the case) he keeps encountering a neighbor of the missing boy, who is all too eager to help. Any other fictional detective would immediately pounce on this person, grilling them nine ways to Sunday, but Avraham repeatedly blows him off, yet again confounding expectations. Meanwhile, there are parts narrated by this somewhat creepy neighbor, who is a high school teacher struggling to become a writer, including an entire subplot involving his writing workshop. And just to jar the reader even more, in the middle of the case, Avraham is forced to go on an exchange trip to Belgium, where his host is wrapped up in a high-profile abduction-murder case -- a diversion that has no apparent relationship to the main storyline.
Unlike many crime stories, as the story appears to come together at the end, there's little of that serotonin-inducing burst of satisfaction as all becomes clear. Rather, it's a jumbled, frustratingly (for Avraham) ambiguous series of interrogations. Then, in the coda on the final pages, there's a conversation that casts the everything into doubt and elevates the book from an interesting take on genre into something more. The one weakness of the book is the 38-year-old Avraham, who remains such a cipher that it's hard to stick with him as a protagonist, since there's almost nothing there to stick to. Hopefully further books in the series will develop him into a little more rounded, fleshed-out character -- I'll definitely be reading to find out.
Unlike the traditional missing persons thriller, the story here unfolds at a rather languid pace, punctuated with microbursts of activity. Even more disconcerting is that Avraham seems kind of confused about what to do and when to do it himself, repeatedly turning to his superior for advice. Despite being told indirectly that Avraham is held in high esteem, the reader will time and again find themselves questioning his competency. This is even woven in to a kind of meta-gag in the book, after Avraham quips that there are no Israeli mystery writers (which is itself not true at all), he receives an eerie phone call from the Shin Bet, who explain why: "The [reason] is that the police in Israel are responsible for trivial investigations that no one would bother reading about or writing a book about, and because most of the police investigators aren't particularly bright. The Shin Bet handles the most important investigations, and no one knows anything about us."
As Avraham stumbles through the investigation (repeatedly being upstaged by a younger, more aggressive colleague assigned to the case) he keeps encountering a neighbor of the missing boy, who is all too eager to help. Any other fictional detective would immediately pounce on this person, grilling them nine ways to Sunday, but Avraham repeatedly blows him off, yet again confounding expectations. Meanwhile, there are parts narrated by this somewhat creepy neighbor, who is a high school teacher struggling to become a writer, including an entire subplot involving his writing workshop. And just to jar the reader even more, in the middle of the case, Avraham is forced to go on an exchange trip to Belgium, where his host is wrapped up in a high-profile abduction-murder case -- a diversion that has no apparent relationship to the main storyline.
Unlike many crime stories, as the story appears to come together at the end, there's little of that serotonin-inducing burst of satisfaction as all becomes clear. Rather, it's a jumbled, frustratingly (for Avraham) ambiguous series of interrogations. Then, in the coda on the final pages, there's a conversation that casts the everything into doubt and elevates the book from an interesting take on genre into something more. The one weakness of the book is the 38-year-old Avraham, who remains such a cipher that it's hard to stick with him as a protagonist, since there's almost nothing there to stick to. Hopefully further books in the series will develop him into a little more rounded, fleshed-out character -- I'll definitely be reading to find out.
waynewaynus's review against another edition
3.0
I really enjoyed this novel. It is an original well written detective story.