Reviews for Criminal Kabbalah: An Intriguing Anthology of Jewish Mystery and Detective Fiction

The average rating for Criminal Kabbalah: An Intriguing Anthology of Jewish Mystery and Detective Fiction based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2017-01-19 00:00:00 Brian Dunbar I did not enjoy this in the way that I enjoyed the earlier volume, Mystery Midrash: An Anthology of Jewish Mystery & Detective Fiction. Most of the stories are far more literary than genre, and in a depressing rather than in a beautiful way. Plus there are stories with protagonists who kill a gay man or a wife who loved him, which, okay, fine, it's a crime story, but I'm into mysteries more than I am crime stories. Plus, the very first story was weirdly ableist.

Review # 2 was written on 2017-12-18 00:00:00 Pamela Pacsay A superb anthology of short mystery stories by Jewish authors and largely set in American Jewish communities giving them a sense of otherness to a gentile like me. The one exception to the American setting was a rendering of the story of Deborah, the ancient Jewish judge, retold as a detective story with the murdered general Sisera's mother as the detective... it had a midrashic quality to it that means I will never think of the story in the same way again. This collection deserves a wider readership than its particular genre, or its cover will solicit, indeed I was given it over 7 years ago an have only now read it. I am now however going to seek out another anthology that this editor has compiled...