Northern Express Weekly's reviewer Nancy Sundstrom has written raves about "Ben Zakkai's Coffin" by Harley L. Sachs
Review by Nancy Sundstrom, Northern Express Weekly, Aug. 29, 2002
Ben Zakkai’s Coffin by Harley L. Sachs
Express readers look forward to the regular columns of Sachs, the Houghton, U.P. resident who had also produced a number of audio books, including “Threads of the Covenant,” “The Search for Jesse Bram,” and “Conspiracy.”
He has proven himself to be a sharp-witted, imaginative crafter of mysteries, and this time, his protagonist is Herman Bachrach, a hard-boiled provocateur whose lack of religious conviction doesn’t prevent him from becoming entangled in a complicated web of deceit and greed centering round a Holocaust vendetta over stolen gold by a Swiss bank from Jewish depositors.
In a style that evokes Chandler and Hammet, Bachrach meets a femme fatale names Diana who lures him into a murder plot that quickly becomes messy and names him as a suspect. Bachrach makes a trek to Switzerland as he attempts to clear his name and stay one step aside of a growing list of foes, especially an elderly war criminal, who would just as soon have him out of the way.
His discoveries as he does so are anything but predictable, which is what elevates this from the slightly formulaic compromises of such a tale. There is a deliciously old fashioned noir sense about this engaging read, and one hopes there will be more installments with the Bachrach character.
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