annual guide to cool reading.
As a former head of Israel's Government Press Office and columnist for the respected Israeli magazine Jerusalem Report, Mr. Chafets is w^ell suited to spin the tale of two NBA basketball stars and their celebrity coach who are mistakenly kidnapped from the Tel Aviv Hilton en route to a diplomatic reception in Jerusalem.
One player is killed immediately and the other two hostages are whisked away to the East Jerusalem compoimd of radical Islamic terrorist leader Dr. Abu Walid. The Sunni terrorists cleverly deceive the United States into believing that the Shiite Hezbollah, under Iranian sponsorship, is holding the hostages in southern Lebanon. The kidnappers demand that the American president apologize for his anti-Islamic policies and that Israel release imprisoned terrorists.
Tyrone Holliman, a resourceful hostage and forward for the Detroit Pistons, befriends Dr. Abu Walid's son, who yearns to play basketball; his devout father allows his son to indulge in the infidel sport with Tyrone. Meanwhile, the player's older brother, former Detroit police captain Rasheed HoUiman, joins forces with his old friend, Israeli chief of police Yoav Kedmi, to rescue Tyrone. The shared American and Israeli strategic goal of destroying Iranian support for Islamic radicalism frustrates efforts to rescue the hostages. The two friends eventually circumvent officisd channels and launch a rogue rescue operation.
The thriller sadly mirrors the realities of Islamic radicalism and pounds home the horrors Islamic extremista continue to perpetrate. One only wishes that the brutal disregard for the sanctity of human life exhibited by those who purport to act in the ngime of God were confined to such well-crafled suspense novels.
— BZF
*The Nylon Hand of God*
By Steven Hartov
William Morrow, 468 pgs., $23 US.
Pitting Israeli military intelligence officers against ruthless Iranian-backed terrorists, Steven Hartov's second novel is a dark and twisted espionage thriller.
With vivid descriptions of people and places, the former member of Israel's Parachute Corps and Military Intelligence lures readers into the dangerous and duplicitous \m-derworld of spymasters and terrorists. A suicide bombing at the Israeli Consulate in New York City brings soon-to-retire Lt. Col. Benjamin Baum to Manhattan. Baum must investigate whether the bombing is linked to "Operation Moonlight," the impending covert prisoner exchange between Israel and Hezbollah that he has orchestrated.
While in New York, Baum tries to reconcile with his estranged daughter, a psychology graduate student at Columbia University. Her interest in terrorist psychology and in impressing her spy-master father subsequently entangles her with notorious German terrorist Martina Klump, a freelancer hired by an anonymous employer to derail the prisoner exchange. Also a suspect in the consulate bombing, the beautiful and resourceful terrorist has an ancient score to settle with Baum and will go to great lengths to achieve all her nefarious goals.
The ensuing web of intrigue and betrayal extends from the streets of New York to a U.S. military base, from the cafes of Casablanca to the harsh desert of the Algerian Sahara where Baum must rescue his daughter, retrieve a stolen American weapon and destroy Klump's plans.
The plot's twists and turns reveal both the strengths and weaknesses of the bonds between human beings, as
strong familial relations freely intermingle with brutal murders. Readers are offered a glimpse into the harsh realities of the lives led by intelligence officers as well as the unique and powerful Unks they forge among themselves.
— BZF
'Lily White'
By Susan Isaacs
HarperCollins.
Susan Isaacs' fans will not be disappointed by her latest novel, Lily White. As in her previous work, this new novel incorporates murder and intrigue into the life of a seemingly ordinary character.
Lily White, also known as Lee, is a criminal defence attorney practising on Long Island. While representing a clever con man accused of murdering one of his wealthy "marks," she has occasion to examine her own life and make drastic changes in lifestyle.
Bom into a decidedly dysfunctional family, Lee would
have had the less laughable name Lily Weiss had she been born two weeks premature. But her parents — Leonard, a wealthy WASP-ophile furrier, and Sylvia, her vain, hypochondriac mother — were determined to fit into gentile society and changed their last name from Weissberg to Weiss to White.
Desperate to be part of the non-Jewish upper crust who live near them in Shorehaven, Long Island, Mr. White attempts to befriend the Taylors, a shabbily genteel family inhabiting a nearby mansion. He stares longingly at Foster and Ginger Taylor, but they are unaware of the Whites until Lee sets the two worlds on a collision course. She marries Foster and Ginger's son, Jasper "Jazz" Taylor, an attorney with a brilliant career ahead of him.
Through Lee's disapproval of her parents, Ms. Isaacs lampoons the Whites' affected air and their abandonment of their Jewish identity. "It's true what they say about them," grumbles Ginger Taylor, star-continues on next page
'The Figured Wheel: New and Collected Poems, 1966-1996'
By Robert Pinsky
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 300 pgs., $35 US.
Robert Pinsky has a rigorous intellect, a generous heart and a penchant for structures drawn from both the canon of poetry and popular culture.
A stunning example of the latter in this rich collection of the poet's complete works to date is an elegy called Impossible To Tell. Constructed fix)m the seemingly im-related structures of the Jewish joke and the Japanese linking-poem, it leads into 16 new and masterful poems.
Whether lyric, narrative or didactic, Mr. Pinsky's poetry pulls the mundane and sublime into a tight and vibrant fabric sewn together with imaginative and associative threads to reveal the soul of civilization in progress. An explicitly Jewish sensibility is apparent in poems such as "Pilgrimage", "The Night Game", "The Uncreation" and "The Ice Storm." In the narrative poem "History of My Heart," past and present, desire and identity are illuminated from different angles. A fluid sensibility lubricates the shifts. Such sensuality reappears in the lyric "City Elegies" which translates the relationship between self and place:
"All day all over the city every person
Wanders in a different city, sealed intact...
Stone gable. Brick escarpment, cliffs of crystal."
Connection is the central impulse in aU of Mr. Pinsky's poems. This important collection of complete works is an opportunity to travel with Mr. Pinsky through his examinations and revelations, while also leaving oneself open for the reverberations of form and content of the poems. In addition to tlie poet's original work, this volume
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