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Lev Raphael is quite good at evoking certain types of intellectuals and their conversations, at setting a scene, at creating a sense of domestic tension and occasional bliss. Given the kinds of comments his characters make, he is obviously interested in thinking about the effect of literature on readers. He enjoys pondering the meaning of being Jewish. Consequently his Nick Hoffman mystery series leaves me puzzled. Why does a talented writer who has so little aptitude for writing mysteries persist in doing so? This is the seventh novel in the series (and his third publisher since 1996, making the press’s name seem quite appropriate). Yet Raphael seems to have lost any skill he may have possessed in the first two novels about the way to shape and develop a mystery. In his latest works there is no tension, no sense of compulsion to keep turning the pages to find out who did it. This problem is all the more ironic given that Nick, who narrates all seven cases, is preparing to teach a university course in the genre and drops one name after another of famous mystery writers from Chandler to Grafton and Lehane. At least this time out we do have a body (missing in the fifth novel), and the murderer will presumably be brought to justice (unlike in the sixth). The plot here is simple. Nick is relaxing in his health club’s steam room when he realizes that trainer Vlado Zamaria is lying dead on one of the benches. He has been murdered, and Nick’s colleague Juno Dromgoole announces cheerfully that Nick will, of course, be the principal suspect given that he has been tangled up in so many other murder cases ("the Male Miss Marple"). She concludes they must therefore solve the case together. So off they go to question suspects, possible witnesses, and acquaintances of the victim. Nick, who is expecting to be let go eventually from his job as an English teacher at a Michigan state university, toys with the idea of becoming a private investigator. He finds once again, however, that he is totally inept at questioning people. What he does not realize is that his annoying superciliousness is a major part of the problem. When a fitness trainer whom he is questioning calls Nick "a teacher," Nick records, "I had to correct him. ‘I’m a professor.’" The reader feels like embracing the trainer when he responds, "Yeah, whatever." Actually the entire cast of characters is pretty unlikable, and since none of the secondary figures are much developed, none is particularly interesting. It says something (and I apologize if this is a spoiler) that the killer is the only appealing person in the whole case. The author’s decision to include a cast of characters, a "Who’s Who," at the beginning of the novel should be emulated more often (though once again a snide subheading, "who they think they are is something else," does not seem particularly witty). For the first time that I can remember in the series, Nick’s gayness actually helps him solve an important aspect of the puzzle. The motive behind the murder is credible. But the method used to kill Vlado does not bear close inspection. Very little of the novel, however, is taken up with the investigation. We hear much more about the floundering writing career of Nick’s mate, Stefan, his excessive moodiness, and his attraction to Catholicism; about their parents’ escapes from the Holocaust and different ways of being Jewish; about Nick’s unexplained sexual attraction to the statuesque Juno, his Edith Wharton bibliography, and all the numerous books he has read and films he has seen (sometimes with lengthy evaluations of their worth); about recipes and other largely irrelevant matters. It has crossed my mind that perhaps the author is playing some sort of postmodern game, but if so, it seems not so much his deconstruction of the genre as his willful destruction of it. Nick’s description of another writer’s work sums up my feelings about this novel: "labored, trite, pretentious, gimmicky crap." When Nick strikes out against "mediocre books," I mentally add another to his list. His sneers at Philip Roth and David Leavitt does not strengthen his position. I have begun to wonder if Raphael has a problem with plot and falls back on the murder mystery as an easy storyline on which to hang anything that happens to pop into his mind. The following is a typical digression: "I recognized the quotation instantly . . . . It was from a gross and funny Jonathan Swift poem called ‘The Lady’s Dressing Room’ in which a lover, seeking a token, slips into his mistress’s private chambers when she’s gone and uncovers the reality behind her fashionable beauty in all the detritus her regimen creates. Ultimately he unveils her brimming chamber pot, and the realization that she’s human crushes him." Though perhaps humorous, the allusion offers no light on the mystery. Nick, I confess, is the kind of bore I tried to avoid at graduate student parties and faculty functions. If you enjoy such asides, however, if you like comedies of manners, academic satire, analyses of gay Jewish life, you might well relish this novel. If you want a cohesive and engrossing murder mystery, you need to look elsewhere.
Reviewed by Drewey Wayne Gunn, December 2006
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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