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.