Let me start off by saying a love a good mystery I’m a big fan of serial mystery stories: Donna Leon’s Guido Brunetti, Andrea Camilleri’s Inspector Montalbano, Laura Lipman’s Tess Monaghan and even the Cupcake Mysteries, just to name a few. That said, when I started Run You Down by Julia Dahl I had no idea it was a mystery, let alone a series of mysteries (okay there is only one other, Invisible City, the first, but still a series is in the works). All I knew was that our Programming VP for the Sisterhood at my synagogue picked this book for our book discussion meeting in October.
I’m glad she did! I sat in my chair (granted this was a lounge by a pool in Hawaii) for six hours and read this book through (with some breaks to admire the scenery and eat lunch – but not too long). And it’s not just that I was on vacation or that the author spells the name of her protagonist, Rebekah, the same as I do my daughter’s, it’s just that it hooked me from the start, it fell within a genre I love, in a setting that fascinates me (the Hasidic community) and it kept the mystery going.
So if you have an afternoon to kill and enjoy a good mystery, give this one a go. I’m looking forward to reading the first book, this weekend.