Book Report: The Saturday Morning Murder

49. Batya Gur, The Saturday Morning Murder: A Psychoanalytic Case (1993) (10/6/21)

The other day a geocache took us to a Little Library in Carmel Valley. It was well stocked, especially with Faye Kellerman and this author new to me, the Israeli Batya Gur. I grabbed a short stack of Gur books, and dived into this first one in the series. 

The story concerns the murder of a psychoanalyst, a guiding light of a renowned institute in central Jerusalem. It's a very hierarchical, closed society, which makes this something of a "locked room" mystery. The investigating officer, the tall and rather saturnine Michael Ohayon, of Moroccan background and once hoping to study medieval Italian history at Cambridge (he gave up that dream to keep his small family together, ultimately without success), wanders around seeking clues, talking to suspects and witnesses, drinking coffee, not eating or sleeping enough, and applying a little police psychology of his own. Though in the end, the mystery is only solved when a second death—a suicide—occurs toward the end of the book and certain connections come to light.

Halfway through, I considered abandoning the project: the pace was slow, there were few revelations. But I kept on because, well, I'd gotten that far. In the end, the solution made sense—which very often is not the case with a standard mystery. I understand Gur's books get better and better, so I might, one of these days, try another one. No rush, though.