Your crime-fiction virtual Chinese restaurant
If your favorite bookshop or library is closed tomorrow, run out and buy Murder is No Mitzvah: Short Mysteries About Jewish Occasions today. The collection of stories originally published in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine includes work by Max Allan Collins, Larry Beinart, Arthur Conan Doyle and others.
Happy holidays.
Happy holidays.
© Peter Rozovsky 2010
Labels: Christmas, miscellaneous
posted by Peter Rozovsky at 4:31 PM
13 Comments:
Happy holidays for yoy too Peter.
don't you mean "run out and smash and grab a copy from the window of your friendly neighbourhood book store", given the shops would be closed today.
Anyway Happy Christmas to you too, hombre!
Nope, can't steal from bookstores.
Merry Christmas!
I'm in luck! My library has this book, and I put it on reserve.
However, my only stipulation is that stories about Jewish holidays be written by Jewish writers, even mysteries. Thus, one gets the great humor, too.
Some of the writers are Jewish, and others could be, to judge by their names. I don't know where Arthur Conan Doyle fits in, though.
He loved his bagels, I understand, Peter!
Or at least they excited his scientific interest.
I am reading this book, have read and laughed my way through 1/3 of it so far.
The humor is priceless, both subtle and not subtle.
I have have to buy this book. I certainly have to photocopy one story about two elderly New York women who think a neighbor is a Nazi terrorist, so that I can give it to friends to read.
I should take another look at the book, and maybe send a story or two to my mother. Thanks.
"Comes the Revolution," by Gregory Fallis is the story about the two elderly New Yorkers who think their neighbor is a Nazi...leads to a zany conclusion. No murder though.
That's an attraction, to see how the writer meets the challenge of setting up a crime story without a murder. And then there's the humorous situation, of course.
It's the mystery of who the neighbor really is, as the two women think his packages are covered by swastikas. They take his mail and listen to his conversations through the wall. The conclusion if hilarious.
There actually aren't murders in all of the stories--a jewelry heist, a rabbi and a sorcerer testing their expertise. Lots of humor and Jewish idioms. I don't know if anyone who isn't familiar with this would understand the wit.
I just start laughing at the titles and the first paragraphs, as I recognize the language.
I will have to buy this (maybe at Abe Books) to loan to friends, those who will get the wit and the cultural references.
And if you copy any of the stories, another one that's full of Jewish idioms and culture is called, "Mom Remembers," about an older woman who solves a murder mystery, just by thinking it through, and remembering a similar mystery from 35 years earlier.
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