Wide-ranging, offbeat mystery tales—a valuable addition to Yiddish literature in translation.
“King of Detectives” Max Spitzkopf stars in this lively collection of rare early-20th-century detective stories, translated from the Yiddish.
Even the most avid mystery buffs may be unfamiliar with the work of short-story writer Kreppel, who published these 15 tales as pulp fiction pamphlets in Poland circa 1908. Among his fans, writes translator Yashinsky in his excellent introduction, was Nobel Prize–winning author Isaac Bashevis Singer, who eagerly followed the adventures of Spitzkopf, “the Viennese Sherlock Holmes,” in his youth. Spitzkopf, like Holmes, is a genius investigator with a fondness for disguises; he even has a Watson-like assistant. However, Spitzkopf is unlike Holmes in at least one significant respect: As Kreppel’s pamphlets’ covers declared, Spitzkopf “IS A JEW—and he has always taken every opportunity to stand up FOR JEWS.” “Kidnapped for Conversion,” set in Galicia (now part of Ukraine), revolves around a deranged Christian man’s plot to marry a Jewish woman—after kidnapping her and forcing her into a convent; in another tale, a young Christian boy’s disappearance sparks vile, antisemitic rumors that local Jews are using young Christians’ blood to make Passover matzos. Spitzkopf encounters bigoted villains throughout, but unfailingly brings them to justice. Some crimes are especially gruesome: In “The Forged Will,” for example, a man murders an entire Viennese family, including a 10-year-old girl. Other cases, though, feature unexpectedly hilarious details—for instance, a gang called the Tabletop Brothers have a habit of “unscrewing…the round tabletops in the city’s cafés, then instigating a quarrel with one of the guests or a waiter and using the heavy marble disks as weapons.” Spitzkopf’s sleuthing methods sometimes rely more on gut feelings than deduction, but Kreppel’s keen sense of melodrama keeps the stories humming; it’s thrilling and satisfying when the shamus stops one villain at gunpoint (in a courtroom!), calmly intoning, “Don’t you dare move a muscle, you murderer….Or I’ll shoot you down like the dog you are.” Kreppel tragically died in a Nazi concentration camp in 1940, but his triumphant tales live on, thanks to Yashinsky’s fine work.
Wide-ranging, offbeat mystery tales—a valuable addition to Yiddish literature in translation.Pub Date: Oct. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9798990998056
Page Count: 575
Publisher: White Goat Press
Review Posted Online: April 9, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Breezy, entertaining characters and a cheeky premise fall prey to too much explanation and an unlikely climax.
An aspiring mystery writer sets out to solve her great-aunt’s murder and inherit an estate.
Twenty-five-year-old Annie Adams has never met her great-aunt Frances, who prefers her small village to busy London. But when a mysterious letter arrives instructing Annie to come to Castle Knoll in Dorset to meet Frances and discuss her role as sole beneficiary of her great-aunt’s estate, Annie can’t resist. Unfortunately, she arrives to find Frances’ worst fears have come true: The elderly woman—who’s been haunted for decades by a fortuneteller’s prediction that this will happen—has been murdered, and her will dictates that she will leave her entire estate to Annie, but only if Annie solves her killing. It’s a cheeky if not exactly believable premise, especially since the local police don’t seem terribly opposed to it. Annie herself is an engaging presence, if a little too blind to the fact that she could be on the killer’s to-do list. Her roll call of suspects is pleasingly long, including but not limited to the local vicar, a one-time paramour of her great-aunt’s; a gardener who grows a lot more than flowers; shady developers and suspicious friends from Frances’ past; and Saxon, Annie’s crafty rival, who inherits the estate himself if he manages to solve the case first. Annie pieces together clues through readings of Frances’ journal, but the story eventually runs aground on the twin rocks of too much explanation and a flimsy climax. Cute dialogue gives way to lengthy exposition, and by the time Frances’ killer is revealed you may well be ready to leave Annie, Dorset, and Castle Knoll behind for the firmer ground of reality. Fans of cozy mysteries are likely to be more forgiving, but if you cast a skeptical eye toward amateur sleuths, this novel won’t change your mind about them.
Breezy, entertaining characters and a cheeky premise fall prey to too much explanation and an unlikely climax.Pub Date: March 26, 2024
ISBN: 9780593474013
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
It's being called a novel, but it is more a hybrid: short-stories/essays/confessions about the Vietnam War—the subject that O'Brien reasonably comes back to with every book. Some of these stories/memoirs are very good in their starkness and factualness: the title piece, about what a foot soldier actually has on him (weights included) at any given time, lends a palpability that makes the emotional freight (fear, horror, guilt) correspond superbly. Maybe the most moving piece here is "On The Rainy River," about a draftee's ambivalence about going, and how he decided to go: "I would go to war—I would kill and maybe die—because I was embarrassed not to." But so much else is so structurally coy that real effects are muted and disadvantaged: O'Brien is writing a book more about earnestness than about war, and the peekaboos of this isn't really me but of course it truly is serve no true purpose. They make this an annoyingly arty book, hiding more than not behind Hemingwayesque time-signatures and puerile repetitions about war (and memory and everything else, for that matter) being hell and heaven both. A disappointment.
Pub Date: March 28, 1990
ISBN: 0618706410
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Oct. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1990
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