Avraham Avraham Moves, Grooves and Takes Control in Sequel, A Possibility of Violence by D. A. Mishani...

At exactly twelve o'clock Avraham reported to the entrance
of the office on the third floor and was asked to wait until the
the commander, Benny Saban, finished a telephone call. In
the meantime, he sent a text to Marianka: About to meet
with the new commander. I'll tell you how it goes.
Xo...
~~~

Avi had gone on vacation after his cases in The Missing File...and fallen in love...
He had gone to Brussels and spent three months with Marianka, resting, relaxing and enjoying their time together. They make plans for her to turn in her resignation to the police there and come to Tel Aviv to live with him. Avi had gone home and immediately worked on his apartment to prepare for her arrival...But she never came...sending him a message that she just couldn't right now...

A Possibility of Violence

By D. A. Mishani

It got worse when he caught up at work...Ilana was now in another office and a new commander, Benny Saban, had been appointed. He then learned, NOT from Ilana, that a final report had been filed on the management of the cases that he'd led before he left on vacation. He tried unsuccessfully to contact Ilana, and failing. Finally, one night she called him at home and they talked about what had happened. He wanted a copy, noting that he should have gotten to read it before it was submitted... Ilana sent it privately and personally through a hotmail account! What was going on?

No way to say it better than to just declare that Ilana had placed everything that happened on his back, except specifically noting that the final confession had been obtained by the officer she had added herself...

Decision Time for Avraham Avraham

When the Going Gets Tough, The Tough Gets Going!

Who said I and other readers might not be able to trust this new hero?! Wow, having your mentor kick ass rather than try to protect him was traumatic... But top that off with a lover who refuses to respond to calls and finally ditches him??? Well, you might say that Avi had had it! 

Only in the evening, after the start of Yom
Kippur, did the complete picture become clear
to him. The streets were dark and quiet, and
faint lights shone in the windows, but the
darkness lifted and the strange details came
together, as he had expected they would. He
then guessed not only how Sara's wife
disappeared but why he was determined
to kill his children...*
~~~

So, the author purposely set us up! He made us question the character in his first book by having him fail, at least, do less than what he needed to do to finish his cases... But guess what, the same type of situation is repeated in the sequel. Once again we see a case begin where another erupts from the first... Only this time Avi is wide-awake and is not going to allow his reputation as presented officially for that case, to be destroyed. Ilana once again tells him she is worried that he's not over having lost control of Ofer's case... but... note that there is more than that going on with Ilana... so be prepared for whatever might come... because it affects Avi as well... 

                

"Avi, I don't think it is possible to save

children from their parents

The story begins when a bomb (fake) is left in front of a child care center. Witnesses suggest that a man with a limp placed it there and then just walked away...

An interesting side bar to the story is that the time period is right in the midst of the two holiest celebrations which would normally shut down everything as public holidays everyone is to observe. It is also mentioned as a bad omen by characters as plans are being made by those involved. Quite refreshing since all of our supposedly religious holidays are either not permitted due to separation of state and religion...or because they have become so commercialized that most people don't comprehend the religious significance...Just saying...  

Uzan was waiting to be interviewed and was quick to show his smart mouth... Lying, obviously, but as Avi questioned him, it became clear that there was insufficient evidence to hold him and probably had been brought in prematurely. So the standard neighborhood questioning followed. Chaim Sara was one of the group that had surrounded the police at the time that the case was found. He had been dropping his son off for the day. When questioned, he indicated he knew nothing about what had happened.

Avraham also interviewed the owner of the care center and quickly became concerned she was lying as well, when she indicated that the suitcase could not possibly have anything to do with her center...

But when he interviewed her assistant in his office, he was able to discover the truth and that there had been disputes between the owner and families. Later he even discovered that somebody had called saying that the bomb had only been the first threat...  Chava Cohen found out the hard way
that she should not have tried to handle it herself, when she was almost killed in an attack... He also discovered later that one of the parents who'd argued with her was Chaim Sara, from whom had come a claim of his son being abused there... And that apparently there had been other complaints along this line! After this case was over, he'd start a new case on what was happening to those kids!
w

"What do you mean, saw? The older
one?" Avraham asked, and Ma'alul
said, "I went over the day she disappeared
...After the little one fell asleep he became
less defensive and started telling me
about how his father took the mother
away at night and told him that she
wouldn't be coming back..."
~~~

When he left the police
station, Chaim already
had a plan, although its
contours were blurry...
His body was weak from
the effort of concealing
his thoughts...
~~~

Things were falling into place for the bomb treat and attack of Chava Cohen so, Avi turned to looking for the missing wife from the Sara family...

In essence, one case had resulted, once again, in two different cases!
But the primary one for Avi was to
ensure that the two Sara boys were
kept safe...

To do this, he kept things hidden from Ilana, was insubordinate to her directly at least once and went around her by contacting the Manila police who were anxious to help... Seems our somewhat timid, insecure investigator turned into that macho man that we love to see as the hero in cop books!

I won't say this is a much better book, rather that, if you didn't like Avi in the first book, I recommend you at leave give him a second chance in this one.  I admit I enjoyed this one better personally. The investigation is action-packed, involving police in Manila, at airports with everybody rushing to solve the cases before Yom Kippur! Cool!


Highly Recommended.


GABixlerReviews

*I'm not quite convinced that Sara would have killed his boys... but I think Avi had the need to be concerned that he might...

D. A. Mishani is a literary scholar specializing in the history of detective literature. The Missing File is his first novel and the first in a series featuring the police inspector Avraham Avraham. The second book, A Possibility of Violence, will be published by Harper in 2014.

Literary Scholar of Detective Lit, D. A. Mishani, Introduces New Series...and Avraham Avraham...

An image froze in his mind. He didn't know
exactly what the boy looked life, but he could
see Ofer Sharabi placing his black bad on a
bench in a dimly lit, deserted public park
and lying down on his back. He's covering
his body with a gray sweatshirt--like the one
on the girl at the bus stop. He's getting ready
to go to sleep. There's not a soul there aside
from Ofer. And that's good. He's not in
any danger...
~~~

Avraham Avraham is such an important character in Mishani's new series that I wanted to try to picture him through somebody who plays a similar role...I thought of David Boreanaz in his character on Bones... I think the personality Boreanaz plays as Seely Booth is the closest I could come in trying to share a little about our new character in a series.

Pressing his palm down on
the metal door handle to
Ilana's office was one of those
moments in his work that
Avraham lived for. One
moment he'd be at Tel Aviv
Headquarters, and an
instant later, when the
door closed behind him,
he'd be entirely somewhere
else--at home...
~~~

I see Avi as sensitive, introspective, dedicated to his job, protector of the innocent. He has very strong opinions, based upon his personal gut feelings as opposed to evaluation of the overall case and this leads him sometimes  wrong.., maybe... He is able to work well with women and is even to some extent needy to have a female support him in his professional development. I'm not quite sure of the power of his role yet...he has a female who seems to be both mentor and supervisor and there seems to be an underlying personal connection, whether of friendship or more, I think, has to be discovered in the future. However, his supervisor has years of experience and guides, but does little in actually solving the case.  He seems to depend on himself for mostly handling all details of cases, perhaps getting lost from the bigger picture, even though he might be assigned the lead for the case...

The Missing File

By. D. A. Mishani

Another fifteen minutes
or so went by with them
sitting there like that, in his
small room, face-to-face...
Let's go over the main
things again.

Across the desk from him sat a mother. Another mother. She was the third he had seen this shift... All his recent shifts were made up of similar complaints. A week earlier a woman had complained that her mother-in-law had put a curse on her. He was sure that the duty officers at this station were out there stopping people in the street and asking them to come in and file ludicrous reports to make fun of him. He wasn't aware of such complaints being filed on the shifts of the other investigators.

It was 6:10 p.m., and if there had been a window in Inspector Avraham Avraham's office he would have seen that it was starting to get dark outside. He had already decided what to pick up for dinner on the way home, and what to watch on the television while he ate. But first, he had to ease the concerns of the third mother. He stared at the computer screen, waiting for the right moment...

The problem is that if I decide now that your son is missing and that the case requires immediate attention, I am obliged to send out officers to begin looking for him right away. Those are the procedures. And I can tell you from experience that there is a chance we will find him in a situation in which you wouldn't like us to find him. What do I do if he found with a joint in his hand? I won't have much choice, and will have to open a criminal report... He fixed his gaze on her, trying to access the impression his little speech had made. She appeared lost. She wasn't used to making decisions--or insisting. "I don't know if something happened to him," she said. "It's not like him to disappear like this."

 

And so Avi sent the third mother home to come back the next day... Mrs. Sharibi brought several pictures of Ofer and had also brought his cell phone which she had earlier told him was found in his room--he hadn't taken it with him...

And so routine police procedures began...

Avi and a female junior officer began interviewing neighbors of the Sharibi family. Ze'ev and his wife had just had their first child, who was not yet a year old. it was the same evening when the police had arrived at their building which surprised Ze'ev, even though he had figured they would be interview them. When Avi suggested they split up for the interviews and he took the wife into the kitchen and the junior officer and Ze'ev stayed in the front room, again Ze'ev was surprised--perhaps disturbed that the main officer would not choose to talk to him first...

That was not the last time that Avi met Ze'ev either. In fact, although he didn't see him every time, Ze'ev was keeping close track of the investigation and, in particular, Avi... It didn't take an long to have Avi pinpoint Ze'ev as a "person of Interest..."

Ze'ev knew why the police cars
were there the moment he saw
them parked outside the building.
It was a gut feeling, a sharp
searing of his conscience, from
deep within. He knew, too,
that he was ready, but didn't
know for what just yet.
Who's playing Ze'ev?!!!
~~~

But was he involved with Ofer missing? In the meantime, a tip had come in anonymously about Ofer having been spotted...but the caller had referred to him as "body..." A small search was organized and Avi again found that Ze'ev had come to join the search...

The sequel to this novel will be out soon and my review follows this one. I must admit that I'm holding on my opinion of Avi. He is definitely not the macho type that we might see as the primary investigator...  In some ways, he reminds me of Alex Delaware, main character in the series I loved by Jonathan Kellerman. Alex had a sidekick and I'm thinking that is what might improve Avi's story since he's usually looking around for somebody with whom he can talk over the case... That seems to be no longer Ilana when she brings in a younger, much more aggressive detective to work the case with him.

He does make touch with a female officer when he flies to Brussels for an officer exchange program...A possible love interest to come in the next book? 

While I hold out my personal opinion of Avi, there is no doubt that my primary attraction for the novel is Mishani's outstanding writing. I found myself too sympathetic toward Avi, because on the one hand, he appears to lack the ability to take an overall assessment on his cases. On the other hand, he becomes driven when he senses that somebody is lying to him and, with sufficient but incomplete evidence, he makes a firm plan of action for a particular individual, even if he is wrong.

Mishani specialized in the history of detective fiction and has a routine story he throws into Avi's interviews--but his colleagues don't appreciate it at all! In essence, he talks about the lack of crime in Tel Aviv and thus lack of crime fiction... This is one reader, though, who can't quite decide whether the author's writing is enough to keep readers interested when we have less than complete faith in the main character's ability to do his job... Watch for my review of the sequel! At this point, I think you should try at least one of his books just to have the experience of reading a "Literary scholar specializing in the history of detective literature" and check out how he has put his expertise to use in his Debut fiction series! I believe readers will clearly see how it has resulted in the way he's writing his own fiction now...


GABixlerReviews

Dror A. Mishani (born in 1975) is an Israeli crime writer, translator and literary scholar, specializing in the history of detective fiction. His detective series, featuring police inspector Avraham Avraham, was first published in Hebrew in 2011 and is translated to many languages. The first novel in the series, “The Missing File”, was shortlisted for the 2013 CWA international dagger award and won the Martin Beck award, for the best translated crime novel in Sweden.

Dror lives with his wife and two children in Tel Aviv.

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