Customer Reviews

The Saturday Morning Murder

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

When Shlomo Gold finds his mentor well known psycho analyst Eva Neidorf, dead early one Saturday morning in Jerusalem, detective Michael Ohayon begins his search for the murderer. Batya Gur meticulously lays out the clues while providing the reader with information about Freudian psychoanalysis.

Gur's writing is not the fast paced mystery that some prefer, it slowly draws the reader to the conclusion. providing little steps along the way. She does give away the culprit before the end of the book and the mystery that remains is how Michael Ohayon will manage to snare the murderer. Gur's use of the setting and background information regarding Freudian psychology deftly adds to the interest of this book.

Michael Ohayon is an interesting detective. He is a troubled, thoughtful man who could use some psychoanalysis himself. Ohayon is a complex creature who has the feel for solving crimes.

This book is to be recommended especially to those who enjoy psychology and who have at least some background in the Freudian technique. Those readers who prefer fast paced reading should avoid the Saturday Morning Murder.

I always enjoy a good who-dunnnit, and "Saturday Morning Murder" was certainly enjoyable and well written.

The main character and investigator, Michael Ohayon, isn't your usual take-charge and hunt-'em-down police detective. He takes a more intellectual approach to investigating the murder of a prominent Psychoanalytic Institute's most respected member. The reader can see the obvious (and in this case, ironic) parallels between psychoanalysis and police investigation. The depth to which the author is able to illuminate the art of psychotherapy and how its unique conditions contribute to the mystery of this murder is also fascinating and makes this story more than just your average murder mystery.

This could be thought of as a thinking person's mystery -- there's very little gore or lurid descriptions of crime scenes, and no violent confrontational scenes you might find in Patricia Cornwell's or Jonathan Kellerman's writing. The horror of the crime and the necessity of figuring out who committed it is no less compelling, however. The book takes a slow start, introducing the characters in a philosophical/analytical style, but the complexity of the case and the implications of "whodunnit" were more than interesting enough to draw me in until the last page.

Just sent this novel to some shrink friends. As usual, the author offers crisp narrative (well rendered by a supple translation), a panorama of vivdly drawn characters, a strong sense of time and place (O Jerusalem!), and a plot of decent complication. As well, there are the author's usual faults: a somewhat pretentious detailing of the rituals and nomenclature of a heuristic community; and, as with all women authors (yes!!) of detective stories, she adores her hero, who is much too good to be true (see, for example, Cmndr Dalgliesh or Lord Peter or Marshal Guarnaccia or Commisario Brunetti, etc., etc; is Mr Darcy the prototype Ms hero?). The author offers a novel's eye-view of upper-middle-class, cosmopolitan Jerusalem in the late 1980s. Sharply written, this novel aims, patently, to instruct as well as to entertain. As usual, with the latter, the author succeeds.

This is Batya Gur's best book in my opinion. The atmosphere and locale are wonderfully well-drawn, as are the characters. This book truly communicates a time and place. The tensions and dilemmas of life in Israel at that time, the histories that each of the characters bring with them to the story are rich and convincing.

I had a lot of hopes for this, in large part based on the high-star reviews given, and because of how great S. Y. Agnon was (another Israeli author). However, I'm having a very hard time getting through this because of how badly -- truly amateurishly -- written this is. The first dictum of writing is "show, don't tell." That means use dialogue and exposition effectively, don't endlessly narrate. Guess what, this is endless narration. Worse, the author uses the "omniscient" approach. She is in everybody's head at once, narrating how they feel, what they're thinking, etc., etc. I personally am stopped in my tracks whenever I confront that level of bad writing. I don't think the author has had any training as a writer whatsoever. A very great disappointment.

Batya Gur, in this complex police-procedural tells a fascinating tale set in Jerusalem's psychology community. Gur specializes in murders that occur in insular societies, such as the shrinks in this book and the kibbutzniks in another one. She plumbs the pressures and suspicions any such community would have when one of their own gets murdered, setting everyone to wondering who among them is capable of such a crime. "The Saturday Morning Murder" can be criticized for overdoing the description of the psychologists world. But through it all is the relentless investigating of investigator Michael Ohayon -- a worthy member of the pantheon of modern-day literary detectives. I found the book slow-moving, but fascinating. Gur's characters are very well defined and her descriptions of Jerusalem are on target, although her Jerusalem is not the one seen often by tourists. This is a very good book -- one to savor.

This is a promising start to the series. Batya Gur presents us with a smart mystery and a good set of characters, led by chief inspector Michael Ohayon. The fact that the action develops in Israel provides a welcome change of scenery from more common locations.

The only aspect in which I felt the quality felt short had to do with the pace at which the story progresses. I am usually not bothered at all by slow developed plots, but in this case I felt the author overdid it. I was able to greatly enjoy this novel despite this characteristic, since the subject of psychoanalysis interests me, and this plays an important part in the story. However, I can see how people that are not particularly interested by this will have a tough time keeping their interest up at certain times.

On the good side, this author shows she can write very well, and towards the end, when the actions speeds up, the story will not let you go. If there is a little better balance in the next works, reducing the portions that are painfully slow, I think I am going to have a great time with this series.

a wonderful murder mystery, with enough twists and turns to keep the reader engaged. the author's knowledge of the therapuetic community was good, and the setting was excellent. delightful reading.

The Saturday Morning Murder was recommended to me by a psychoanalyst friend and I cannot thank him enough for turning me on to a whole series of novels by a writer who deserves to be far better known. I do not generally read detective stories. But I found that Batya Gur is an impeccable writer whose eye and ear are attuned to the nuances of general human behavior and the sociology of Israeli life in Jerusalem in particular. I could not put this book down and I plan to read through everything this author has written

I admire anyone who can write a novel. I greatly admire anyone who can get a novel published. In the case of this book, I admire myself for reading this novel, to the end, no less! The beginning would have you believe that something, anything is going to happen, and it does! A woman is murdered. The mystery here does not lie in finding out who murdered her, but in when the author intends to acknowledge that she is writing a murder mystery. In page after page, after page . . . one reads of the training involved in becoming a traditional Freudian psychoanalyst. When the book finally, and agonizingly slowly, wends its way back to fiction, you no longer care who was killed, who killed her, or why. You think of her demise as a blessed release. As my captioned title implies, the entire world in which these people live and work is so incredibly mind numbing that I am surprised that they all haven't either killed each other or committed suicide long before the author conceived the plot. I finished this novel as a test of superhuman will power, akin to losing 100 pounds or kicking a heroin addiction. If, however, I can save one fellow human being from having to read this book, my life will not have been lived in vain.