Sunday, July 6, 2014

Avraham Avraham Moves, Grooves and Takes Control in Sequel, A Possibility of Violence by D. A. Mishani...


At exactly twelve o'clock Avraham reported to the entrance
of the office on the third floor and was asked to wait until the
the commander, Benny Saban, finished a telephone call. In
the meantime, he sent a text to Marianka: About to meet
with the new commander. I'll tell you how it goes.
Xo...
~~~

Avi had gone on vacation after his cases in The Missing File...and fallen in love...
He had gone to Brussels and spent three months with Marianka, resting, relaxing and enjoying their time together. They make plans for her to turn in her resignation to the police there and come to Tel Aviv to live with him. Avi had gone home and immediately worked on his apartment to prepare for her arrival...But she never came...sending him a message that she just couldn't right now...

A Possibility of Violence
By D. A. Mishani

It got worse when he caught up at work...Ilana was now in another office and a new commander, Benny Saban, had been appointed. He then learned, NOT from Ilana, that a final report had been filed on the management of the cases that he'd led before he left on vacation. He tried unsuccessfully to contact Ilana, and failing. Finally, one night she called him at home and they talked about what had happened. He wanted a copy, noting that he should have gotten to read it before it was submitted... Ilana sent it privately and personally through a hotmail account! What was going on?

No way to say it better than to just declare that Ilana had placed everything that happened on his back, except specifically noting that the final confession had been obtained by the officer she had added herself...


Decision Time for Avraham Avraham
When the Going Gets Tough, The Tough Gets Going!

Who said I and other readers might not be able to trust this new hero?! Wow, having your mentor kick ass rather than try to protect him was traumatic... But top that off with a lover who refuses to respond to calls and finally ditches him??? Well, you might say that Avi had had it! 
Only in the evening, after the start of Yom
Kippur, did the complete picture become clear
to him. The streets were dark and quiet, and
faint lights shone in the windows, but the
darkness lifted and the strange details came
together, as he had expected they would. He
then guessed not only how Sara's wife
disappeared but why he was determined
to kill his children...*
~~~

So, the author purposely set us up! He made us question the character in his first book by having him fail, at least, do less than what he needed to do to finish his cases... But guess what, the same type of situation is repeated in the sequel. Once again we see a case begin where another erupts from the first... Only this time Avi is wide-awake and is not going to allow his reputation as presented officially for that case, to be destroyed. Ilana once again tells him she is worried that he's not over having lost control of Ofer's case... but... note that there is more than that going on with Ilana... so be prepared for whatever might come... because it affects Avi as well... 
                
"Avi, I don't think it is possible to save
children from their parents
The story begins when a bomb (fake) is left in front of a child care center. Witnesses suggest that a man with a limp placed it there and then just walked away...

An interesting side bar to the story is that the time period is right in the midst of the two holiest celebrations which would normally shut down everything as public holidays everyone is to observe. It is also mentioned as a bad omen by characters as plans are being made by those involved. Quite refreshing since all of our supposedly religious holidays are either not permitted due to separation of state and religion...or because they have become so commercialized that most people don't comprehend the religious significance...Just saying...  

Uzan was waiting to be interviewed and was quick to show his smart mouth... Lying, obviously, but as Avi questioned him, it became clear that there was insufficient evidence to hold him and probably had been brought in prematurely. So the standard neighborhood questioning followed. Chaim Sara was one of the group that had surrounded the police at the time that the case was found. He had been dropping his son off for the day. When questioned, he indicated he knew nothing about what had happened.

Avraham also interviewed the owner of the care center and quickly became concerned she was lying as well, when she indicated that the suitcase could not possibly have anything to do with her center...

But when he interviewed her assistant in his office, he was able to discover the truth and that there had been disputes between the owner and families. Later he even discovered that somebody had called saying that the bomb had only been the first threat...  Chava Cohen found out the hard way
that she should not have tried to handle it herself, when she was almost killed in an attack... He also discovered later that one of the parents who'd argued with her was Chaim Sara, from whom had come a claim of his son being abused there... And that apparently there had been other complaints along this line! After this case was over, he'd start a new case on what was happening to those kids!
w
"What do you mean, saw? The older
one?" Avraham asked, and Ma'alul
said, "I went over the day she disappeared
...After the little one fell asleep he became
less defensive and started telling me
about how his father took the mother
away at night and told him that she
wouldn't be coming back..."
~~~
When he left the police
station, Chaim already
had a plan, although its
contours were blurry...
His body was weak from
the effort of concealing
his thoughts...
~~~
Things were falling into place for the bomb treat and attack of Chava Cohen so, Avi turned to looking for the missing wife from the Sara family...

In essence, one case had resulted, once again, in two different cases!
But the primary one for Avi was to
ensure that the two Sara boys were
kept safe...

To do this, he kept things hidden from Ilana, was insubordinate to her directly at least once and went around her by contacting the Manila police who were anxious to help... Seems our somewhat timid, insecure investigator turned into that macho man that we love to see as the hero in cop books!

I won't say this is a much better book, rather that, if you didn't like Avi in the first book, I recommend you at leave give him a second chance in this one.  I admit I enjoyed this one better personally. The investigation is action-packed, involving police in Manila, at airports with everybody rushing to solve the cases before Yom Kippur! Cool!


Highly Recommended.


GABixlerReviews

*I'm not quite convinced that Sara would have killed his boys... but I think Avi had the need to be concerned that he might...



D. A. Mishani is a literary scholar specializing in the history of detective literature. The Missing File is his first novel and the first in a series featuring the police inspector Avraham Avraham. The second book, A Possibility of Violence, will be published by Harper in 2014.

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