The Butcher's Theater
A Novel
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4.2 • 27 Ratings
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
They call the ancient hills of Jerusalem the butcher’s theater. Here, upon this bloodstained stage, a faceless killer performs his violent specialty. The first to die brutally is a girl. She is drained of blood, then carefully bathed and shrouded in white. Precisely one week later, a second victim is found.
“Crisp . . . suspenseful . . . intense.”—The New York Times Book Review
From the sacred Wailing Wall to monasteries where dark secrets are cloistered, from black-clad Bedouin enclaves to labyrinthine midnight alleys, veteran police inspector Daniel Sharavi and his crack team plunge deep into a city simmering with religious and political passions to hunt for a murderer whose insatiable taste for bloodshed could destroy the delicate balance on which Jerusalem’s very survival depends.
BONUS: This edition includes an excerpt from Jonathan Kellerman's Guilt.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In his fourth mystery, Kellerman leaves Los Angeles and Alex Delaware, child-psychologist hero of When the Bough Breaks and Blood Test, for the richness of Jerusalem and the subtle complexities of Chief Inspector Daniel Sharavi. The latter is a Yemenite Jew, a quiet and intense war hero with a California-born wife and three young children. When the extensively mutilated body of a young Arab girl is found, Sharavi assembles a group of assistants whose varied ethnic origins represent the composition of the city and state. After a second Arab girl is similarly killed, the case is given political significance in the press, leading to an Arab-Jewish riot and more bloodshed. As the investigation intensifies, Kellerman intersperses chapters that reveal the development of the killer's psychopathology, but not his identity. A third murder focuses Sharavi's attention on Amelia Catherine, the city's U.N.-run hospital, where finally he and the killer meet in a prolonged and graphic fight to the death. Dense with the textures of life in modern-day Jerusalem, Kellerman's story is both police proceduralit is dogged investigation, international and high-tech, that puts the last pieces in placeand penetrating psychological suspense-thriller. Panoramic in geography, layered in history, the novel is powered by close attention to the interior lives and motivations of its major characters, one of whom, a psychologist, may well be the author in guest appearance. This is a major novel, Kellerman's most ambitious and strongest to date. 100,000 first printing; $150,000 ad/promo; Literary Guild and Mystery Guild selections; author tour.
Customer Reviews
Real page turner
I read this years ago and to this day remember that I couldn't put it down. Those I recommended it to also loved it.
Confusing
I appreciate the history involved, but I wanted a murder/mystery not a confusion of Arab, Jew, Muslim, Hassidic, American, etc. Worlds evolving in Israel. Too much, John!