Literary Murder [Hardcover]

Batya Gur (Author), Dalya Bilu (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1993

Inspector Michael Ohayon of the Jerusalem police must deal with profound ethical questions when he investigates the murder of a celebrated poet and professor of literature at the Hebrew University. 12,500 first printing.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

As she did in her absorbing U.S. debut, The Saturday Morning Murder: A Psychoanalytic Case , Israeli writer Gur follows Michael Ohayon, Superintendent of Criminal Investigations in Jersusalem, on the trail of murder set within a small, tightly structured community. Here, two professors in the Hebrew Literature Department at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem are killed on one weekend: young lecturer Iddo Dudai is poisoned in Eilat by carbon monoxide introduced into his scuba diving tanks, and Shaul Tirosh, Israel's most prized poet and head of the Literature Department, is fatally bludgeoned in his university office. The week before, Dudai, who had recently returned from a research trip to the States, had challenged Tirosh's critical views in a public seminar. Tirosh, remotely elegant and a known womanizer, had just ended a longtime and widely acknowledged liaison with the wife of his ardent supporter and colleague, Tuvia Shai, and had turned his attentions to Dudai's young wife. While unraveling the tangled personal and professional relationships that knit the victims and suspects (who are chiefly the members of the literature department), the scholarly Moroccan-born Ohayon finds himself drawn to Tirosh's poems, instinctively believing that they hold the key to the case. As he uncovers the diverse and profound betrayals that lie behind the crimes, Ohayon takes his first trip to the U.S., adjusts to an unwanted break from his married lover and oversees the interaction of his own colleagues. A complex mystery set in an unusual, well-developed milieu with a full cast of multi-dimensioned characters, Literary Murder is literary pleasure.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

The suspicious death of a scuba diver pulls Michael Ohayon, chief inspector of the Jerusalem police, into an unfamiliar world of high academicians, poets, and the petty (but sometimes fatal) spats and jealousies that run rampant in such a rarified atmosphere. The Moroccan-born Ohayon is a compassionate and considerate man and a relentless investigator, and he despises social and intellectual pretensions. When he rubs against the Israeli social and cultural elite, the sparks fly. Gur, a professor of literature in Jerusalem, knows academia well, and she uses it as a foil to illustrate the social and cultural tensions that permeate Israeli life. At the same time, she tells a fine detective yarn, keeping her cards well hidden until the end, deftly setting up the reader for twists, turns, and surprises. Jay Freeman

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 357 pages
• Publisher: HarperCollinsPublishers; 1st U.S. edition (November 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 006019023X
• ISBN-13: 978-0060190231
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,139,936 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent fiction and cultural study, October 21, 1999

By 

Catspec "Catspec" (VT USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Literary Murder (Paperback)

As always, Batya Gur has crafted an excellent story, and an ambiance which makes us feel we are in Israel. Detective Michael Ohayon is, as usual, brilliant. Gur writes well above the usual "mystery" genre, and her books are worth reading for their literary merit by anyone who enjoys good fiction.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Literally a Literary Murder, April 3, 2001

By 

Judith Lindenau "dulcie22" (Traverse City, MI USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Literary Murder (Paperback)

I discovered this novel quite by accident, and I found a real treasure! "Literary Murder" is by far the best written and most intellectual example of the mystery genre I've seen in quite some time. It's set in academia, at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, with some action taking place in the United States. The characters have depth and dimension, and are profoundly interesting. The plot is integrated well into the setting and the characterization. And the prose and poetry are superb.

I can't recommend this novel highly enough!

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Academic Lectures Meet Crime, April 9, 2002

By 

Lottie L. Baker (Charlottesville, VA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Literary Murder (Paperback)

Batya Gur's entrancing novel captivates readers with its rich plot and well-developed cast of lively characters. Gur masterfully intertwines the murder mystery genre with an academic genre of literary interpretation, allowing readers to understand her book on different levels. The murder plot itself is gripping from the beginning of the novel when two Hebrew University literature colleagues are found dead. Readers follow chief police inspector Michael Ohayon's painstaking procedure of discovering whom he can and cannot trust. The process of fathoming the mystery shows that everyone has secrets and lies, whether they are directly related to the murder or not. Emphasizing the constant tension of discerning truth from lies, Michael and his staff constantly rely on and refer to the polygraph machine, which indicates that nearly all witness testimonies are "inconclusive." The solution of the novel in fact reveals that false identities in fact lie at the center the mystery.
The motivation behind the murders is perhaps more fascinating to the reader than the basic "whodunit" question; revealed at the book's conclusion, the reasoning and background behind the crimes shock readers more than the actual killers. In order to fully enjoy and appreciate the novel, readers must pay close attention to Gur's literary allusions and analogies throughout the plot. Gur interweaves academic lectures on the nature of poems and interpreting lectures within her murder mystery. Although readers may be tempted to skip over the academic speeches as seemingly unrelated to the mystery at hand, the lectures actually parallel, hint at, and comment on the mystery's solution. Connecting the literature professors' lectures on poetry with the reasoning behind the crimes allow readers to perceive a larger implication about the nature of art and its relative importance in the world.