When his temple is defaced, Lieberman battles Chicago's most hateful citizens. Over a decades-long career in Chicago homicide, Abe Lieberman has something most cops only dream of: a personal life. He has hobbies, a wife, and a grandchild who is about to celebrate his bar mitzvah. But Lieberman's personal and professional lives collide when his temple is attacked by vandals, and he uncovers a river of hate that runs right through the heart of Chicago's North Side. Too moderate for the hard-liners, too outspoken to win friends among the Arabs, the Conservative Temple Mir Shavot is caught in the middle of the Israeli-Palestinian debate. When a hate group breaks into the temple, scrawling graffiti and stealing a valuable Torah, Lieberman must decide if the guilty party was neo-Nazis, militant Palestinians - even, perhaps, a group of uncompromising Orthodox Jews. Death waits at the intersection of politics and religion, and Abe Lieberman must face it head on. About the Author. Stuart M. Kaminsky (1934-2009) was one of the most prolific crime fiction authors of the last four decades. Born in Chicago, he spent his youth immersed in pulp fiction and classic cinema - two forms of popular entertainment which he would make his life's work. After college and a stint in the army, Kaminsky wrote film criticism and biographies of the great actors and directors of Hollywood's Golden Age. In 1977, when a planned biography of Charlton Heston fell through, Kaminsky wrote Bullet for a Star, his first Toby Peters novel, beginning a fiction career that would last the rest of his life. Kaminsky penned twenty-four novels starring the detective, whom he described as the anti-Philip Marlowe. In 1981's Death of a Dissident, Kaminsky debuted Moscow police detective Porfiry Rostnikov, whose stories were praised for their accurate depiction of Soviet life. His other two series starred Abe Lieberman, a hardened Chicago cop, and Lew Fonseca, a process server. In all, Kaminsky wrote more than sixty novels. He died in St. Louis in 2009. Review quote.Beautifully rendered. . . . Kaminsky is extraordinarily attuned to the domestic minutiae of his detectives' lives. - Chicago Tribune. Kaminksy's books just keep getting better. . . . An outstanding story. - Booklist. A standout performance. . . . Nobody writing today can mix taut suspense with a sense of creeping mortality as shatteringly as Kaminsky. - Kirkus Reviews. For anyone with a taste for old Hollywood B-movie mysteries, Edgar winner Kaminsky offers plenty of nostalgic fun . . . The tone is light, the pace brisk, the tongue firmly in cheek. - Publishers Weekly. Marvelously entertaining. - Newsday. Makes the totally wacky possible . . . Peters [is] an unblemished delight. - Washington Post. The Ed McBain of Mother Russia. - Kirkus Reviews.
