Last evening, I attended a session featuring Jonathan, Faye, and Jesse Kellerman at the opening event of the Book Fair Month at the Mandel Jewish Community Center in Beachwood. The event required me to pay a fee of $20 as a JCC non-member for the one-hour discussion by the three Kellermans about their books and how they go about the business of writing. I consider it money well-spent.
I’m sure that most of the 200 or so people in attendance belonged to the Cleveland Jewish community. But there probably were quite a few “goyim” or non-Jews like me in the audience because the event was well publicized by the Cuyahoga County Library System and by the Cleveland Plain Dealer–and also because the three authors are best-selling mystery writers.
Two books were the center of attention: The Golem of Hollywood, a collaborative effort by Jonathan and his son, Jesse, and Murder 101, the latest novel by Faye, Jonathan’s wife and Jesse’s mother. I had finished reading the The Golem a couple of weeks ago and currently am in the middle of reading Murder 101.
Not only are the books entertaining reading as detective/mystery novels, but they provide the reader (me in this case) with insight into Jewish and other cultures and into geographical areas that I am/was not familiar with. There’s even a bit of family history discussion sprinkled into both books.
I would encourage anybody who likes detective/mystery novels to borrow or buy these latest efforts by these prolific authors. You can check out synopses of the two books at Amazon at these addresses:
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