Yael, who went to live on a Kibbutz for a short time as a child in order to learn Hebrew, ended up learning Polish because all the children with whom she played spoke that language! Murder on a Kibbutz is in essence a story of a power struggle in a contained environment. There was much said about the interesting method of injecting an unknown culture into the middle of a mystery or vice versa. Some heated discussion ensued. You should have been there if you weren't !!! All in all, we liked the book and thought it was definitely litery mystery novel.
Notes on Current Author & Book
Batya Gur was born in Tel Aviv in 1947, lived in the United States for many years, and now lives in Jerusalem. She is a trim woman with striking green eyes and pale blonde hair. She began writing at age 39 when she got tired of teaching literature in high school and working on her Master's thesis on the Israeli Poet, Natan Zach. She has a MA in Comparative Lit. from Hebrew University where she studied Hebrew Lit and History.
All of her mysteries made it to the New York Times Notable Book List. Her books have been translated into French, German (She won Germany's Crimi Prize), Italian, Dutlch, Spanish, and Japanese. All of her novels are set in a closed world, new to most readers. Many secondary characters are intellectually stimulating, adding an extra dimension.
The detecitve: Morrocco-born Chief Inspector, Michael Ohayon, an Israeli since age 3, a scholarship boy at a boarding school, has a Master's in European Medieval History (Ph.D. unfinished) from Cambridge's Guilels; an unhappy marriage and divorce derailed his PhD. He has a son, Yuval. He has been involved with Maya for 5 years; he is a smoker. Ohayon resembles Maigret of Simenon fame in his belief that you have to slowly enter the world of the victim in order to penetrate the mind of the suspects. He is sensitive to tensions between Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews in Israel, Israelis and Palestinians, etc. because of his background.
Batya Guy's mysteries include: The Saturday Morning Murder: A Psychoanalytic Case (this has been televised, Literary Murder: A Critical Case, Murder Duet, A Musical Case, and Murder on a Kibbutz: A Communal Case. Her novels include: I Didn't Imagine It Would Be This Way and Stone for Stone.