Pick up a spy novel in English at random, and chances are it’s about the CIA, the KGB, British intelligence, or some combination of them. But here’s one from former CIA analyst David McCloskey that’s entirely different. The espionage agents in his 2022 novel, The Persian, work...
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Pulitzer Prize-winner Lawrence Wright is equally adept at both fiction and nonfiction, for which he won the prize. He has explored the history of Al Qaeda and 9/11, the so-called “Church” of Scientology, and other themes in 11 deeply researched factual accounts published from 1979 to...
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Erez Brown mostly deals with divorces. He’s what you might call a low-rent PI, running a firm that consists only of himself, a secretary, and an apprentice. And, unsurprisingly, there’s a sameness to the cases that come to him. He knows exactly what has happened as soon as a client...
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We all have secrets. . . Secrets are a part of our lives and the lives of literature’s great characters. But spies operate in a more complex world of secrets—things they hide from family, from friends, and from themselves. I found the double lives of spies as a compelling premise to explore.” And...
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Estimated reading time: 7 minutes When the world’s best spy agencies come to mind, it’s rare that the Mossad isn’t among them. Israel’s Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations, known domestically as “the Institute” (Hebrew: Mossad), has gained a...
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A review of The Debba, by Avner Mandelman. @@@@@@ (5 out of 5). David Starkman, a naturalized Canadian citizen, was a trained killer for the Israeli armed forces who carried out black missions in Arab capitals in the 1960s. When he learns of his father’s murder in Tel Aviv, Starkman is suddenly pulled back into the ethically murky environment he had fled seven years earlier.
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Few subjects are more likely to set off heated arguments among American Jews than the actions of the State of Israel. Since the country claimed its independence in 1948, Israel’s wars and its relations with the Palestinian Arabs who live inside its disputed borders have accounted for more...
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From 2007 to 2010, Welsh author Matt Rees published the four novels of the Palestine Quartet. The first, The Collaborator of Bethlehem, introduces schoolteacher and would-be detective Omar Yussef. It was an outstanding debut for the series that followed—an unconventional but entirely convincing...
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When Americans think of Israeli history, we fasten on a handful of names: Chaim Weizmann. David ben Gurion. Golda Meir. We think of kibbutzim, the Israeli Defense Force, the country’s great universities, and its legal system. All these people, and many others whose names are prominent in the...
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In the early history of the Israeli state, the name Aaron Aaronsohn stands out. In some ways, the agronomist who discovered an ancient strain of wheat that could be grown in the desert is as significant a figure as Chaim Weizmann and Baron Edmond de Rothschild. Large numbers of Jewish colonists...
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If you read most general histories of World War II, you’re likely to get the impression that the Holocaust was a simple, straightforward affair. Hitler resolved to “solve the Jewish problem” by simply killing all the Jews in Europe. And once the policy was set, German soldiers in...
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Israeli corruption is at the core of this murder mystery set in the West Bank. I first became aware of the world around me when Harry Truman recognized the newly independent State of Israel 70 years ago. Practically all my life, then, I’ve known what it is to be Jewish and find myself...
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Israeli history is one of continuous war punctuated by intermittent stretches of peace. The open military conflicts the young nation has experienced have always threatened its continuing existence, but none more so than the Yom Kippur War in 1973. Never before and never since has Israel come...
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A Latvian Jew freed from imprisonment in World War II internment camps makes his way to Palestine in 1948 and joins the Haganah, the Jewish paramilitary organization that led the fight for Israeli independence. His new name is Jossi. He operates as a courier in Jerusalem, part of a small cell that...
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I wouldn’t be a very good revolutionary. I’ve always had trouble with moral absolutists — the sort of stiff-necked people who will never budge from their views even when the consequences for others around them will be dire. Estimated reading time: 2 minutes The Betrayers is about...
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Will Israel survive? Surely, this is one of the most urgent questions in world affairs today. If you care about Israel and its people, or if you’re simply concerned about the prospects for peace in the Middle East, you owe it to yourself to read Ari Shavit’s My Promised Land. Fair...
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Mysteries & Thrillers Tuesday includes my latest mystery and thriller book review,
with links to other science fiction content.
Nonfiction Wednesday includes my latest nonfiction book review,
with links to other nonfiction content.
The Weekly includes summaries and links to all the previous week’s three to five book reviews, including some that don’t appear in any of the other newsletters.
Mysteries & Thrillers Tuesday includes my latest mystery and thriller book review, with links to other science fiction content.
Nonfiction Wednesday includes my latest nonfiction book review, with links to other nonfiction content.
The Weekly includes summaries and links to all the previous week’s three to five book reviews, including some that don’t appear in any of the other newsletters.