Mo Shuman, a homicide detective who is about to retire at the Twelfth Precinct on the Lower East Side, catches the murder of Aaron Cohen, a yeshiva student whose body is found beneath the Williamsburg Bridge. In solving the murder with his homicide squad, Shuman must come to grips with his own demons.
Murder at the Yeshiva is a suspenseful story of greed, sexual abuse and murder against the backdrop of a cloistered religious community. Detective Shuman finds himself at the center of a political struggle as he hunts down the murderer with grim determination at the same time he is being hunted down himself.
Murder at the Yeshiva starts with a simple premise - but murder is seldom simple; especially when it's immersed in subterfuge with concurrently-running subplots and special interests. Slowly, readers become privy to information that Shuman does not know - and just as slowly, the gears of a murder machine begin to come together and ramp up.
Part of the compelling draw of Murder at the Yeshiva is this attention to detail, which takes a relatively straightforward scenario and develops it into something unexpectedly complex. And while readers who want quick action and predictable paths in their murder mysteries may find themselves chafing at the bit of a slower-moving plot than some, the pleasure here lies in this exquisitely delicate evolutionary process.
S. Bird takes the time to build characters, atmosphere, subplots, motives, and mystery.
Under his hand the plot thickens like a pudding, carefully stirred and tended until, many chapters into the story, readers find themselves thoroughly immersed in a wellcooked saga that's as much about Shuman's evolution as it is about solving a murder.
D. Donovan, eBook Reviewer. MBR.
