Murder Duet: A Taut Israeli Policier – The Fourth Michael Ohayon Crime Mystery (Michael Ohayon Series, 4)

Murder Duet: A Taut Israeli Policier – The Fourth Michael Ohayon Crime Mystery (Michael Ohayon Series, 4)

With tension as taut as strings on a cello, the fourth Michael Ohayon mystery from “Israel’s Agatha Christie,” in which the police officer must solve the murder of two musicians, is “pure reading pleasure” ( New York Times ). After his cellist friend's father and brother—who are also well-known musicians—are brutally murdered, Chief Superintendent Michael Ohayon, a classical music afficionado, sets out to solve the crime. From the opening pages, where the detective plays a compact disc of Brahm's First Symphony, to the newly discovered music for an unknown Vivaldi requiem that provides a rock-solid motive for the crime, lovers of crime novels, as well as music, will thrill to every dulcet note. "A virtuoso performance." - Booklist Batya Gur's new book is a long, luxurious mystery for aficionados of murder, classical music and psychological motivation. Modern Israel is the setting of Murder Duet , which captures a strong sense of people and place. a nice change from the chorus of crude violence that accompanies many thrillers. - USA Today Fourth in a series of popular, intellectually challenging mysteries from acclaimed Israeli author Batya Gur, Murder Duet features once again the smart, charming, and lonely police officer Michael Ohayon. After his cellist friend's father and brother--who are also well-known musicians--are brutally murdered, Ohayon, a classical music afficionado, sets out to solve the crime. From the opening pages, where the detective plays a compact disc of Brahm's First Symphony, to the newly discovered music for an unknown Vivaldi requiem that provides a rock-solid motive for the crime, lovers of crime novels, as well as music, will thrill to every dulcet note. Batya Gur (1947-2005) lived in Jerusalem, where she was a literary critic for Haaretz , Israel's most prestigious paper. She earned her master's in Hebrew literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and she also taught literature for nearly twenty years. Murder Duet A Musical Case By Gur, Batya Perennial Copyright © 2004 Batya Gur All right reserved. ISBN: 0060932988 Chapter One Brahms's First As he put the compact disc into the player and pressed the button, it seemed to Michael Ohayon that he heard a tiny cry. It hovered in the air and went away.He didn't pay too much attention to it, but went on standing where he was, next to the bookcase, looking at but not yet actually reading the liner notes accompanying the recording.He wondered absently whether to shatter, with the ominous opening chord for full orchestra, with pounding timpani, the holiday-eve calm.It was the twilight hour at summer's end, when the air was beginning to cool and clear.He reflected that it was a moot point whether a man called on music to wake sleeping worlds within him.Or whether he sought in it a great echo for his conscious feeling, or listened to it in order to create a particular mood when he himself was steeped in fog and emptiness, when it only seemed that this holiday-eve calm embraced him, too.If that was so, he thought, he wouldn't have chosen this particular work, which was worlds removed from the holiday-eve quiet in Jerusalem. The city had changed greatly since he had come here, as a boy to attend a boarding school for gifted pupils.He had seen it transformed from a closed, withdrawn, austere, provincial place into a city pretending to be a metropolis.Its narrow streets were jammed with lines of cars, their impatient drivers shouting and impotently shaking their fists.Yet he was moved time and again to see how even now, on every holiday eve (especially Rosh Hashanah, Passover, and Shavuoth, but also on Friday evenings and if only for a few hours, until darkness fell), sudden peace and quiet would reign, utter calm after all the commotion and vociferousness. So complete was the calm before the music spread through the room, so absolute the stillness, that it was as if someone bad taken a deep breath before that first note, held up a baton, and imposed silence on the world.Instantly the nervous, darting, driven looks of the people in the long lines at the ringing supermarket cash registers vanished from his mind.He forgot the anxious expressions on the faces of the harried people hurrying across Jaffa Road with plastic bags and carefully clasping gift basket.They had to make their way between rows of cars with engines running, whose drivers stuck their heads out the windows to see what was holding up traffic this time.All this was now silenced and effaced. At about four o'clock the car horns and the roar of the engines fell silent.The world grew calm and tranquil, reminding Michael of his childhood, of his mother's house and of the Friday evenings when he came home from boarding school. When the stillness descended on holiday eves, he again saw before him his mother's shining face.He saw her biting her lower lip to disguise her agitation as she stood at the window waiting for her youngest child.She had allowed