Crimes of the City

Avram Cohen #1

by Robert Rosenberg

A suspense thriller set in the city of Jerusalem. The main character is Detective Avram Cohen, who must search for a killer who is sure to strike again. The mystery is set against a backdrop of Jerusalem's political and religious tensions.

Genres: Israel, Crime

288 pages, Hardcover

First published February 1, 1991

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

[Cheryl]

This was less of a mystery and more of an exploration of the psyche of a place and a situation. Cohen is a man obsessed with truth and with doing his part to protect the city that he loves. Unfortunately, that city is Jerusalem during the intifada where crime is complicated by history, religion, politics, drugs, and n obsession with the end of the world. He turns over every stone he can think of and hunts for the violent among the merely unbalanced, the ultimate motive among the personal agendas of all around him. A man who lost his own faith in Dachau as a child, he nonetheless understands the motives of all the players in the Holy City. An interesting read.

[Horvath Laszlo-Alexandru]

1/5
I read 100/300 pages of the version I got my hands on, but man... it's terrible, really. I usually try the first 50 and in case it's real sh*t, like A Clockwork Orange was, then I simply give up, and yet I told myself that I'm gonna give this one a try. Useless.

There are so many contexts, concepts, situations that are simply not explained at all. How is the reader supposed to know about all religious factions in Jerusalem or important places if they've never been there? I was really expecting to learn something new reading this book. There are too many stupid dialogues, which could simply be replaced by narration intertwined with backstories and contextualization of all the mess created in the first chapter.

This first chapter I'm talking about is an absolute disaster. I don't even remember sh*t, cuz it was so badly contextualized that it really felt like a hurricane of riots, actions, and unrest. It was not well-written at all. I couldn't even follow the sense of all that meaningless vomit (unless it was going to be explained, needless to say). But I guess I didn't dedicate enough patience trying to decipher and solve mysteries on my own. Or perhaps I wasn't focused enough. Quite a boring reading experience to be fair. I had had better.

And then the story itself... I couldn't care or get attached/involved in it and it felt annoying too many times. I ain't reading any other page and I'm sorry I had to waste time just to give this book a bad review.

[Peter]

A skilfully written story set in a vividly-evoked contemporary (1980s) Jerusalem where a detective investigates the murder of two Russian nuns in a crime which appears to have political dimensions. The cop is a believable, introspective character although not old enough to have experienced what the author maintains he did in the Holocaust.

[Elizabeth]

This was a fascinating story. The characters were very well-developed and intriguing. I plan to read more of this author.