A mysterious hitman opens fire on a Tel Aviv café and opens a Pandora’s box.It is a warm and sunny day when gunfire destroys the peace of lunchtime diners at a trendy café in central Tel Aviv. The shots, fired by a mysterious biker, hit several people, and two of them die on the spot: Kobi Ozri, a former criminal and police informer, and a young woman, a local office worker. Kobi’s handler, Hadas … Kobi’s handler, Hadas Levinger, is immediately brought in to solve the double murder. As she mourns Kobi’s death and confronts a public storm about the powerlessness of the police in their battle against the underworld, Hadas sets out on a journey full of startling twists and turns, until she exposes the surprising truth – all the while facing shattering revelations in her personal life.
The Hit is the second book in the Inspector Hadas Levinger series. It was preceded by Hill of Secrets.more
This book is about a female detective in Israel. She investigates the death of 2 people, one a small time criminal and the other an innocent woman getting her food order. She then discovers that the so called innocent bystander was investigating fraud at the company she worked for. She tracks down the hitman who tells her that.
Very educational book pertaining to the ongoing and increasing problem of human trafficking.
I am sure there is an audience for this book. I just couldn’t get into it.
Good Read
Recommended
The Hit is part Israeli police procedural and part daily drama in the personal life of a divorced Israeli policewoman in her mid-thirties who we are repeatedly reminded doesn’t want children. It was written in Hebrew by an Israeli author in her mid-forties, Michal Hartstein, and translated into English for international consumption. Like a major character she created, Shirley Navon, the author has a background in economics and finance.
There are lots of Hebrew names in this book that a foreign reader will find unfamiliar, and very little description of the locations in Israel which might have compensated for a story with almost no action.
In fact, the aforementioned Shirley is one of the few recognizable names to English readers, but even that name was more likely Shir Lee, which means “My Song” in Hebrew.
In The Hit, a police informant with known criminal connections and a bystander are shot and killed in a Tel Aviv cafe. In the only significant but predictable part of the book, the policewoman discovers the ambiguity behind who was the target of the hit and who was the bystander.
You would expect the beauty of Israel to provide a good writer with a rich palette to paint vivid word pictures, but they are largely missing in this disappointing book.
I wish I could say the disappointments ended there, but they did not. Beginning at Chapter 9, a third of the way through the book, the text was no longer separated by paragraphs, which made reading the remaining 169 pages an even greater struggle. There are also several instances of missing words and mispunctuations, at least in the English translation. Whatever the author paid her editor, she paid too much.
Finally, at the end, the author solicits her readers to post “positive” reviews “if” they liked her book. There is no similar invitation for readers who were not impressed with her writing to post their reviews.
No author should be afraid of unfavorable reviews so long as they’re fair. Both good and bad reviews help guide prospective buyers, and criticism, when it’s constructive, helps make writers better. Even the best among us have room for improvement.
Heartstein brings his experience as a CPA to bear on a story that keeps you guessing to the very end. Good read!
This is a story about a woman whose ex-husband is having a baby with another woman, and her devastating reaction to that. Incidentally a couple of murders occur during the same time frame, but let’s not let that distract us from the important story about the baby. If that’s your cup of tea, enjoy. Not mine.
Excellent character of woman detective who is more dedicated to her work than herself personally. Interesting look at crime in Israel. Unpredictable.