LITERARY MURDER
by Batya Gur
An oppressive spring khamsin hangs over Jerusalem as Inspector Michael Ohayon (The Saturday Morning Murder, 1991) searches patiently for the link between the bludgeoning murder of Hebrew Language poet- superstar Shaul Tirosh and the scuba-diving ``accident'' of his protÇgÇ Iddo Dudai hours away in Eilat. Though preliminary clues point to Tirosh's womanizing as a motive—he was involved with the wives of two colleagues, including Dudai, and a graduate student who'd never forgiven him for her abortion—Michael is convinced that the answer lies elsewhere, in an extended, self-serious skein of analogies between detective work and literary criticism. Leisurely and old-fashioned in its endless series of interrogations: Michael's idea of detective work seems to be giving everybody another round of polygraphs. But the characters' finely detailed moral intrigues pay off in the end.