A DEADLY ACT opens in an Israeli theater during a production of KING LEAR in Hebrew. The play is mesmerizing and deeply moving. The lead actor, Isser Rotner, is deservedly honored. He is also the man that Adam Lapid wants to see, but for a totally different reason.
Adam, in his mid-thirties, had been a Police Detective in Budapest until the Shoah. The war took away his job, his wife, their two young daughters, and the person he had been. After being liberated from Auschwitz, he remained in Europe for a few years which he spent killing Nazis directly responsible for the deaths of some of the six million Jews killed by their regime. He then moved to Israel, fought in the War of Independence, and became a private detective.
Isser’s wife, Dahlia, used to be the lead actress in the theater company until she was in a serious accident and ended up confined to a wheelchair. She is the person who hired Adam to prove that Isser murdered a young actress five years previously. She is also the person who provided his alibi. She doesn’t think the police can do the job. “They'll fail to find the evidence necessary to convict him. If that happens, I'll be condemned as a liar or a madwoman. I'll have ruined my reputation for nothing. And my reputation is very dear to me, Mr. Lapid. It is practically the only thing of worth I have left.”
The plot focuses on life in the theater, the actors, their egos, their rivalries, their insecurities, their jealousies. It has twists and turns and an unexpected conclusion.
It takes place in the new state of Israel with descriptions of the area, the lives of the people, and the problems they faced. One of the main locations in the novel is Trumpeldor Cemetery, named for a famous soldier and opened in 1907 before Tel Aviv became a city and when Jaffa was ravaged by cholera. The stories of those buried there are a reminder of the history of the Arabs and Jews living there then and in the following few decades when Jews were slaughtered in Arab riots.
Tidbit It was strange, and disheartening, how these dismal memories could pop up at any time, without warning, like a body rising to disturb the placid surface of a lake in which it had long been submerged.
This is the fifth of Jonathan Dunsky’s Adam Lapid novels. All are well-written, historically accurate, informative page-turners with some very interesting characters. ( )