The Cutting Room

Avram Cohen #2

by Robert Rosenberg

FIRST PENGUIN BOOKS EDITION. 1993 trade paperback, Robert Rosenberg (House of Guilt). Fired from his job as a detective in Jerusalem, Cohen accepts the invitation of longtime friend Max Broder to come to Hollywood. But when Cohen arrives, Max is dead--an apparent suicide. Cohen's investigation reveals that Max's murder has roots beginning in a Nazi concentration camp called Dachau. - Amazon

304 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1993

About the author

Writer, journalist, poet and Internet pioneer Robert Rosenberg was born in Boston in 1951 and died of cancer in Tel Aviv, where he spent most of his adult life, on October 24, 2006. He was survived, briefly by his wife, painter Silvia Rosenberg, who died also of cancer.

The author of several crime novels, Rosenberg also collaborated with Moshe "Muki" Betzer in writing Secret Soldier. The autobiography of Israel's Greatest Commando.

Reviews

[Razvan Banciu · Rating 2 out of 5]

A dull book.
The characters are not-likeable, the plot is not existing, nothing happens for almost one hundred pages, the final is poor and leaves too many questions.
Two stars as perhaps an undeserved encouragement...

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked the first book in the Avram Cohen series fine, but I found this one much more compelling. Cohen is retired and in LA visiting a friend from his life during and immediately after the Holocaust, and he can't help poking into murders he believes are somehow connected to their shared past. Interesting to watch the relationships he forms in this totally new setting, and how they change over the course of the book.

[Mya R · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read the first book in this series for a geographical challenge. Combined with peering at maps, it was excellent for that. I read this one because I had liked the protagonist and wanted to know what happened to him. And sometimes the perspective of a place by an outsider offers insights a native doesn’t have. (It didn’t.) I came very close to not finishing this one. I muscled through the last several chapters only to see if I was right about the plot. (I was.)

The trope on which this is based is very obvious. Add weirdly spaced flashbacks/ dream sequences, and a lot of unpleasant characters (including the protagonist), and it just failed for me. That said, I might still attempt the 3rd book in the series, because being back in Jerusalem might be what Avram (and the author) needs. *shrugs*

[Paula · Rating 3 out of 5]

from final chapter: "Witnesses are always participants, he thought, even if they only contribute their memories to the action."

Interesting mystery involving Avram Cohen, Jerusalem detective, in intrigue surrounding his friend Broder who lives in LA and has directed a movie about their lives together during and after WWII.

Nokmim -- from https://www.theguardian.com/world/200..., copied 10/23/16: "Some accounts suggest the group that would come to be known as the Nokmim, Hebrew for avengers, was born in the spring of 1945 in Bucharest. A Passover gathering of survivors was addressed by Abba Kovner, of the Jewish uprising in the Vilna ghetto...invoking Psalm 94, in which God promises that he shall deal with the enemies of the people of Israel: "He will repay them for their iniquity and wipe them out for their wickedness." ...the fate that should be meted out to the Germans. And if the courts of international justice would not do it, then the Jews should do it themselves."