The Saturday Morning Murder (1988) by Batya Gur
Good Reads meta-data is 304 pages, rated 3.68 by 811 litizens.
Genre: Krimi.
DNA: Israeli.
Verdict: heavy duty procedural.
Tagline: slow and unsure wins the race.
When the Psychoanalytic Institute in Jerusalem is opened early Saturday morning one of its most illustrious members is found dead. It is a job for Michael Ohayon, chief inspector, who is always exhausted and frequently distracted but seems to have a bottomless budget.
The first question is practical, how was the misdeed done? It sorta looked like suicide but the absence of the gun blunted enthusiasm for that conclusion (though we know that is not always decisive, see The Silence of the Rain discussed elsewhere on the blog). Then the next question is why. What was the motive? Was the perpetrator someone off the street or a member of the Institute. The security of the building is proof against an intruder, so then an insider, or – just to complicate things – an outsider with access to an insider, must be a murderer!
On it goes with a cast of blue herrings: a soldier, a confused patient, a jealous rival, an inept analyst, an Arab gardener, and more in a rich cast. In the end, well, read the book.
It has much back-and-forth in Jerusalem at all hours, which I found more interesting than the de rigueur backstory of Ohayon. The trope is a variant of the locked room murder. In this case the locked Institute. It is also a variant of the isolated locale, since the Institute is staffed and frequented by very few. Then there are the stock uncooperative witnesses whose next scheduled meeting is far more important than apprehending a murderer in their ranks.
There are some loose ends to this casual reader: the lecture notes seemed to have been stolen twice. I never did find out what was in the lecture manuscript that was so important. Though the solider was treated carefully, not so the far more formidable judge.
In short, it has the usual ingredients of a police procedural and they were well handled, so that I kept reading. I will likely try another in this long running series. This one, by the way was the first.