Justice. - book reviews

Judaism, Wntr, 1997 by Lawrence W. Raphael

While the Jewish protagonist is part of dozens and dozens of mystery novels, he or she is almost always highly assimilated and often intermarried. Many of these assimilated Jewish detectives express their identity only in cultural and ethnic forms. Surprisingly, however, it is those few Jewish characters by contrast who are clearly identified as Jews, and who utilize Jewish tradition, law, or custom to advance the plot, that are the most popular. Since 1986 there have been more than 125 Jewish detective novels published. They can be divided roughly into three categories: Assimilated, Acculturated, and Affirmed. Examples of the first category (the largest in number) include a Boston private eye and taxi cab driver - Carlotta Caryle in the novels of Linda Barnes, and a Chicago sportscaster solving grisly murders - Andy Sussman in the novels of Michael Katz.

The second category of Acculturated includes a New York City policeman who retires to become a private investigator - Shelly Lowenkopf in the novels of Richard Fliegel, and a Boston children's book artist - Calista Jacobs in the novels of Kathryn Lasky Knight. Both of these characters, and many more like them, struggle with their own and their family's sense of Jewish identity which sometimes serves to advance the plot.

The third, and smallest, category of Affirmative Jewish protagonists are the province of Faye Kellerman and Harry Kemelman, and also includes a low-keyed and complicated Chicago policeman - Abe Lieberman in the novels of Stuart Kaminsky, and a First Amendment lawyer who struggles with who he is as a Jew as he defends anti-Semites and murderers - Nate Rosen in the novels of Ronald Levitsky. This handful of Jewish mystery writers have merged their interest in solving a crime with their desire to illuminate some aspect of traditional Judaism and the Jewish community. Kellerman and Kemelman, who have been on national bestseller lists, each published their most recent novel during the past year.

Harry Kemelman, probably the originator of the religious contemporary Jewish detective, introduced us to Rabbi David Small with Friday the Rabbi Slept Late, in 1964. Rabbi Small is now retired and has partially moved out of Barnard's Crossing, a Boston Back-bay suburb, where he has solved cases in ten previous novels, but trouble has a way of following him. Working with the police of his former community, he helps solve a murder, and while doing so, manages to teach a college course in Judaism that educates the reader on aspects of Jewish thought and history.

Kemelman stretches a bit in this latest account of Rabbi Small's detection powers and we surely miss the many interesting characters from his former synagogue who populated his previous books. Having utilized this series of novels as a useful way to introduce people to American synagogue life, I am sorry that Rabbi Small will be no more. With Harry Kemelman's death his fictional rabbi will be unable to find a part-time pulpit in his retirement and continue this kind of teaching and modeling to his congregants and many other readers.