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RUN YOU DOWN is Julia Dahl's riveting second mystery featuring journalist Rebekah Roberts. In this current book, Rebekah continues crime solving in New York's ultra-orthodox Jewish community as well as searching for her birth mother. Dahl's excellent first novel INVISIBLE CITY was named a Best Book of 2014 by the Boston Globe and was a finalist for two prestigious awards, the Edgar and the Mary Higgins Clark. The author's background as a crime reporter gives both books a strong grounding in both the newspaper business and the vagaries of the criminal justice system. In the previous book, Rebekah investigated the death of a Jewish woman locked into Brooklyn's ultra-Orthodox world of Chasidic Judaism. In writing about this, Dahl opened a window into this secret world and showed the reader aspects of the culture that are usually hidden. This theme of revealing what the Chasidic community conceals from outsiders continues in the latest book.
In the current book the husband of Pessie Goldin, a woman who was found dead in her bathtub, seeks out Rebekah because he has read and appreciated her work on the previous murder. He is from a small fictitious upstate New York town named Roseville that resembles some of the existing Chasidic enclaves such as Kiryas Joel. Like its real-life counterpart, Roseville residents find themselves alienated from the general population. In this case a police chief does not seem sympathetic to their problems. An ex-policeman named Saul who is familiar to us from the first book aids Rebekah in her investigation. He left the religious community and met Rebekah's mother Aviva in a safe house frequented by people who were trying to escape the life they had been born into.
The structure of this book allows us to gain personal knowledge of the two important characters. Aviva narrates one chapter and then her daughter Rebekah narrates the next. In the chapters she narrates, Aviva tells us who she was as a young woman, what occurred between her and Rebekah's father, and why she needed to abandon her child and return to Brooklyn. In Rebekah's chapters we are given first-hand information of her investigation into the murder and also her growing revelations about her mother who has tried to contact her after more than two decades. Rebekah learns that her mother's younger brother Sam, who has also left the community, may be involved with the perpetrators of the murder.
Homophobia and white supremacists are part of the mix as Rebekah begins to learn the truth of Pessie's death. She does not want her newly discovered uncle to be involved but it seems as though he might be. And then the book takes a turn into violence that could be right out of today's headlines. What occurs seems all too real and Rebekah is on the scene as it unfolds although no longer allowed to cover the story because of her possible connections to it.
RUN YOU DOWN takes the reader on an enthralling and enlightening ride through the same community that Rebekah was involved with before. This book can stand alone without the other as prologue but I have no doubt that the reader will want to obtain the first as well. Dahl is most likely not yet done with Rebekah Roberts. She has created a multi-dimensional female protagonist who is well developed and does what she needs to do in spite of suffering with self-doubt and even depression. As the novel concludes the author provides intriguing possibilities for where Rebekah's next adventure may take her.
§ Anne Corey is a writer, poet, teacher and botanical artist in New York's Hudson Valley.
Reviewed by Anne Corey, June 2015
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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