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3.27 AVERAGE
3.27 AVERAGE
The father and son team of Jonathan and Jesse Kellerman offer up their first joint effort, a mythical police procedural smorgasbord sure to leave the reader wondering if they might have made a grave error in delving in. The reader meets the run-down LAPD Detective, Jacob Lev, as he is reassigned to a Special Branch and tasked with hunting down a killer who's left his victim decapitated and with an odd Hebrew letter burnt into the counter. As Lev struggles with his alcoholism, inability to make meaningful inter-personal connections, and find himself, he must forge ahead wherever the clues take him; at least as far as his superiors will allow. While he follows the leads into Europe, Lev discovers some daunting clues and secrets from his past. A parallel tale is peppered throughout the novel, as though this book needed any more tangential narrative, examining the apparent rise of the original Golem, a monster of 17th century Jewish lore, and its roots back to the creation of Man. Thrown together, the novel reads like a London Tube map, a mess waiting to be discovered. Fans of the Kellermans ought to be ready for a confusing and less than fulfilling ride.
Perhaps it is me, who has not read a Jonathan Kellerman novels, but this was a total train wreck. It surpasses anything I have read of the younger Kellerman, and I cannot see myself wanting to approach anything they pen together. The main story, a police procedural,tells an interesting story and could have, perhaps, held its own. That said, the overly introspective and dramatic look at Lev's character does little to pull me in. That and the jolting 'throwback' sections do little to interest me and float around. These two bestselling authors have surely caught a case of the James Patterson bug, using their names to sell books and letting drivel churn itself out. Best left on the cutting room floor.
Tepid reviews for you both, Messrs. Kellerman. Stick to your solo work and chat over coffee about your ideas, saving us the pain of reading another mess.
Perhaps it is me, who has not read a Jonathan Kellerman novels, but this was a total train wreck. It surpasses anything I have read of the younger Kellerman, and I cannot see myself wanting to approach anything they pen together. The main story, a police procedural,tells an interesting story and could have, perhaps, held its own. That said, the overly introspective and dramatic look at Lev's character does little to pull me in. That and the jolting 'throwback' sections do little to interest me and float around. These two bestselling authors have surely caught a case of the James Patterson bug, using their names to sell books and letting drivel churn itself out. Best left on the cutting room floor.
Tepid reviews for you both, Messrs. Kellerman. Stick to your solo work and chat over coffee about your ideas, saving us the pain of reading another mess.
This generally isn't my genre, but I enjoyed this book - you sort of had to keep reading to find out what happened. I was drawn in. Some of it got a little difficult to follow, but I was rooting for our hero!
This was a strange book. Not planning on reading any more in this series. The story alternated between a biblical story relating to the creation of the Golem and a present day investigation into the murder of a man and also some cold case murders of women. Lots of references to Jewish traditions and customs and scripture. The main character is an alcoholic, depressed detective of Jewish decent who is transferred to Special Investigations to figure out what is going on when a head is found.
The story is overly detailed with everything described in tremendous detail. The book could have been half the size. Everything the guy does and sees is described as horrible, depressing, boring, ugly,etc. there is never anything upbeat. The descriptions tend to be condescending about everything just got tired of it.
Plowed my way thru just to see how it ended but didn't really like it.
The story is overly detailed with everything described in tremendous detail. The book could have been half the size. Everything the guy does and sees is described as horrible, depressing, boring, ugly,etc. there is never anything upbeat. The descriptions tend to be condescending about everything just got tired of it.
Plowed my way thru just to see how it ended but didn't really like it.
DNF. Three stars because the plot was intriguing and it was well-written. It was not what I was expecting. It had a strange paranormal undercurrent and very odd passages that were Old Testament retellings. After reading 32% of the book, I didn’t understand the purpose of either. I also didn’t enjoy what felt to me like toxic masculinity. I didn’t like the way the character thought about women or the emphasis on sex, particularly with intoxicated women.
Father-and-son Kellerman are two-thirds of the bestselling authors in the Kellerman family (Faye -- Jonathan's her husband and Jesse is her son -- is the third). Jonathan writes police procedurals with some psychological twists when he tells the stories of consulting psychologist Dr. Alex Delaware and his friend, LAPD detective Milo Sturgis. Jesse has written standalone novels but some have strayed into the crime-and-punishment scene occupied by his parents. He's demonstrated a willingness to be quite a bit more outre in his description and style, sometimes bordering on supernatural images even though his stories are all grounded in the here-and-now. Neither has been as overt in expressing their Jewish heritage and faith as Faye in her Decker and Lazarus novels.
But father and son will take some leaves from mom's notebook in The Golem of Hollywood, a mystery thriller that also involves the golem, a medieval Jewish legend about an indestructable blood avenger made of clay and animated by human beings. Jacob Lev is a functional alcoholic police detective in Los Angeles stuck in the traffic division after irritating his superiors. A strange and grisly find -- a human head with Hebrew writing nearby -- earns him a call from a rather shadowy division commander who reassigns him to handle the case. When the head turns out to belong to a wanted serial killer called the Creeper, Jacob has more information. But he also has more confusion to go along with it, as his superiors seem even more interested in a mysterious woman named Mai that he encounters than they are in the killer. Jacob travels to Prague to talk to police there about a similar murder, and uncovers facts about his cultural and personal history that enlighten and obscure at the same time.
As you'd expect when half your writing team (Jonathan) has spent 30 or so novels writing about police procedure, that part of the story is solidly founded. Jacob is molded from much of the same clay as Jesse Kellerman's young and somewhat arrestedly adolescent protagonists, and the younger author gives him a realistic 21st century cynical voice. The supernatural elements, though, are vague and unfocused. A parallel narrative of the creation of the golem's animating spirit of revenge, moving up through the late 1500s and the story of Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel and the Golem of Prague dig much too deeply into the past and offers far too much detail for the minimal addition it makes in the story. Those same elements in the main narrative leave far too many unanswered questions -- or at least, they leave a lot of the wrong questions unanswered -- to bring about any kind of satisfying conclusion, and Jacob's own personal narrative stops rather than completes. It's OK for a reader to turn the last page with a questioning "Hmmm?" but Golem of Hollywood ends with a "Wha?" and very little in its overstuffed earlier sections to help that reader find either an answer or a better question.
Original available here.
But father and son will take some leaves from mom's notebook in The Golem of Hollywood, a mystery thriller that also involves the golem, a medieval Jewish legend about an indestructable blood avenger made of clay and animated by human beings. Jacob Lev is a functional alcoholic police detective in Los Angeles stuck in the traffic division after irritating his superiors. A strange and grisly find -- a human head with Hebrew writing nearby -- earns him a call from a rather shadowy division commander who reassigns him to handle the case. When the head turns out to belong to a wanted serial killer called the Creeper, Jacob has more information. But he also has more confusion to go along with it, as his superiors seem even more interested in a mysterious woman named Mai that he encounters than they are in the killer. Jacob travels to Prague to talk to police there about a similar murder, and uncovers facts about his cultural and personal history that enlighten and obscure at the same time.
As you'd expect when half your writing team (Jonathan) has spent 30 or so novels writing about police procedure, that part of the story is solidly founded. Jacob is molded from much of the same clay as Jesse Kellerman's young and somewhat arrestedly adolescent protagonists, and the younger author gives him a realistic 21st century cynical voice. The supernatural elements, though, are vague and unfocused. A parallel narrative of the creation of the golem's animating spirit of revenge, moving up through the late 1500s and the story of Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel and the Golem of Prague dig much too deeply into the past and offers far too much detail for the minimal addition it makes in the story. Those same elements in the main narrative leave far too many unanswered questions -- or at least, they leave a lot of the wrong questions unanswered -- to bring about any kind of satisfying conclusion, and Jacob's own personal narrative stops rather than completes. It's OK for a reader to turn the last page with a questioning "Hmmm?" but Golem of Hollywood ends with a "Wha?" and very little in its overstuffed earlier sections to help that reader find either an answer or a better question.
Original available here.
I'd give this 2.5 stars if I could. I got into the narrative at times, especially towards the end, but the ending completely let down the rest of the story.
A serial killer and the Golem of Prague. How could it miss? I read the book in one day (long flights). It is superlative. A police procedural with a mystical Yiddish neshama. I loved it, and I hope that you will, too.
This was a well written book. It was also one of the strangest books I have ever read. I would have preferred a more definite ending, but I'm sure there will be more novels on the way to assist with that.