Sun 14 Mar 2010
Reviewed by William F. Deeck: ARTHUR D. GOLDSTEIN – A Person Shouldn’t Die Like That.
Posted by Steve under Authors , Bibliographies, Lists & Checklists , Characters , Reviews[5] Comments
William F. Deeck
ARTHUR D. GOLDSTEIN – A Person Shouldn’t Die Like That. Random House, hardcover, 1972. Hardcover reprint: Detective Book Club, 3-in-1 edition, September 1972.
Several days after his chess-and-checkers-playing friend, Jacob Schneider, fails to show up at the New York City park where they play, Max Guttman visits him to see if all is well. Unfortunately it isn’t, for Guttman finds him in his apartment, beaten to death.
Realizing that he knew little about Schneider other than that he had survived a concentration camp, Guttman begins trying to find out why a man should have to die like Schneider did. Guttman is also pressured, only a little bit externally but very much internally, to see what he can do to keep a presumably innocent black drug addict from being convicted of the crime.
The police don’t care for Guttman’s inquiries, nor apparently does the murderer, who may have struck again.
In Synod of Sleuths, edited by Jon L. Breen and Martin H. Greenberg, James Yaffe discusses the Jewish detective and Jewish characters in mystery novels — Guttman isn’t literally a detective, merely a not-very-well educated but definitely intelligent immigrant who wants to know why — and contends:
At least in this novel — the first of three — Guttman, seventy-two-year-old widower, is not a practicing Jew. Indeed, he has not kept Kosher since his wife died. Is his Jewishness “simply a thin coating of local color?”
Not a question I can answer, and Yaffe does not deal with Goldstein’s novels in his essay. What I can say is that Guttman is an amusing, thought-provoking and complex character whom it was it pleasure to spend time with.
Bibliography: [Taken from the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin.]
GOLDSTEIN, ARTHUR D(avid). 1937- . Pseudonym: Albert Ross. Series character: Max Guttman, in all three titles below.
A Person Shouldn’t Die Like That (n.) Random House, 1972. Nominated for an Edgar, Best First Mystery Novel, 1973.
You’re Never Too Old to Die (n.) Random House, 1974.
Nobody’s Sorry He Got Killed (n.) Random House, 1976.
ROSS, ALBERT. Pseudonym of Arthur D. Goldstein.
If I Knew What I Was Doing (n.) Random House, 1974.
March 15th, 2010 at 3:44 am
Leo Rosten’s Silky Pincus and Harry Kemmelman’s Rabbi David Small are the only Jewish detectives I can think of off hand, though there have been a couple of series with Israeli detective heroes.
Michael Chabon’s most recent novel features a Jewish private eye in an alternate reality where Jewish refugees from the Holocaust established a Jewish state in Alaska. And of course the hero of William Goldman’s NO WAY TO TREAT A LADY, ‘Beau’ Brummel is a Jewish homicide cop romancing a ‘shiksa’ and hunting a serial killer.
I would argue with Breen, Greenberg, and Yaffe only to the extent that most detectives and characters in mystery aren’t particularly religious at all unless it’s part of the plot. With the exception of a few British sleuths of noble birth that I assume are Anglicans or tecs like Father Brown or Souer Angelle, the religion of most characters in mysteries, is in itself a bit of a mystery unless it’s a plot point. Most seem to be secular members of whatever faith they ascribe to.
For the life of me I couldn’t tell you what faith Philip Marlowe follows are was born into.
Sax Rohmer’s Severac Babylon is an interesting series with it’s hero a Jewish Robin Hood who none-the-less, turns out to be anti-Semitic, usually praying on wealthy Jews who take advantage of unsuspecting Englishmen. If you can get past that some of the stories are interesting variations of the bent hero format.
And of course there’s always Sol Weinstein’s Oy Oy Seven.
March 15th, 2010 at 12:45 pm
David
Many Jewish detectives hide their religious identities, and there are more of them than either I or you realize, until I did some researching. For the most part, though, you’re right, the fact that they’re Jewish has no bearing on the mysteries they solve, except only incidentally.
As for a list, how about starting with Toby Peters (Tobias Leo Pevsner), for one, and:
Carlotta Caryle (Jewish mother)
Myron Bolitar
Nathan Heller (Jewish father)
Nathan Shapiro
Amanda Pepper
Harvey Blissberg
Moses Wine
Jack LeVine
Kinky Friedman
Rachel Gold
Jacob Asch
Abe Lieberman
and many others, annotated with the degree of “Jewishness” in their stories, to be found at
http://www.jewishmysteries.net/bibliography.html
Most of these came along after Bill Deeck wrote his review. And most of them would never have occurred to me either. I’d have said Rabbi Small and been stumped to have come up with even another.
— Steve
March 15th, 2010 at 6:43 pm
Steve
And we both left out Jerome Chayrn’s Issac Sidel and Sidney Holden.
And wasn’t Benny Cooperman Jewish?
Still I think all of those named fall into the secular category, but then so do most sleuths in the genre.
And while we never knew exactly what Spenser’s religious background was I assumed Susan Silverman was Jewish. But that may be the point. I had to assume, I’m not sure if Parker ever said.
March 16th, 2010 at 4:34 pm
Steve — I once read a book on the JFK assassination. In it one of the Dallas Police Department detectives expressed surprise upon learning that the guy he’d been working alongside of for nine years was Jewish. The man’s family had immigrated two generations before and he was just as much a cowboy in outlook, language, and behavior as everybody else around there.
March 19th, 2010 at 5:20 pm
Maybe I’m wrong, but from all I can tell, I have a feeling that Kinky Freeman hasn’t lived in Texas long enough! (Born in Chicago, moved to central Texas with his parents at an early age.)