A unique 1,000-year-old book is the pursued object of this scriptural detective story.
Inscribed with precision on vellum in the 10th century, the book known as the Crown of Aleppo has been, over the centuries, the most authoritative version of the Hebrew Bible. Produced by a sect that owed fealty solely to the written Word, the Crown survived the Crusades in Jerusalem. In the outskirts of Cairo in the 12th century, it was studied by the great physician-philosopher Maimonides. It traveled eventually to Aleppo, Syria, where it was reverently safeguarded in a synagogue. That history is not disputed. But in 1947, when the establishment of the State of Israel was ratified by the UN, an anti-Semitic riot erupted and the Aleppo synagogue was torched and sacked. The sacred text was saved, hidden with a Muslim merchant, transported covertly to Turkey and eventually brought back to Jerusalem and the new Jewish nation. Nevertheless, it was not a happy ending. Only three-fifths of the Crown ended in the hands of the government caretakers. Absent was the Pentateuch, the Five Books of Moses. The dramatic story of the book and the search for the missing pages attracted a president of Israel, undercover agents, specialists and colorful and wealthy dealers in ancient texts. There were false trails, lies and deaths. The best theory: The central jewels of the Aleppo Crown were taken after it reached Jerusalem. After more than half a century, the pages have still not been recovered, but AP correspondent Friedman is fairly sure who took them, naming a learned, highly placed government official, a sage collector could not resist the remarkable text. As the author wryly concludes, the “page with the passage Thou shalt not steal was stolen. Also missing are the commandments not to bear false witness, covet another’s property, or commit murder”—all violated, he notes in his sharply etched story of the Aleppo Codex. Through the Levantine haze and a millennium of safekeeping, a carefully paced narrative of purloined Judaica.
Pub Date: May 15, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-61620-040-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: Feb. 28, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2012
HISTORY | TRUE CRIME | JEWISH | WORLD | GENERAL HISTORY
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.
Rootin’-tootin’ history of the dry-gulchers, horn-swogglers, and outright killers who populated the Wild West’s wildest city in the late 19th century.
The stories of Wyatt Earp and company, the shootout at the O.K. Corral, and Geronimo and the Apache Wars are all well known. Clavin, who has written books on Dodge City and Wild Bill Hickok, delivers a solid narrative that usefully links significant events—making allies of white enemies, for instance, in facing down the Apache threat, rustling from Mexico, and other ethnically charged circumstances. The author is a touch revisionist, in the modern fashion, in noting that the Earps and Clantons weren’t as bloodthirsty as popular culture has made them out to be. For example, Wyatt and Bat Masterson “took the ‘peace’ in peace officer literally and knew that the way to tame the notorious town was not to outkill the bad guys but to intimidate them, sometimes with the help of a gun barrel to the skull.” Indeed, while some of the Clantons and some of the Earps died violently, most—Wyatt, Bat, Doc Holliday—died of cancer and other ailments, if only a few of old age. Clavin complicates the story by reminding readers that the Earps weren’t really the law in Tombstone and sometimes fell on the other side of the line and that the ordinary citizens of Tombstone and other famed Western venues valued order and peace and weren’t particularly keen on gunfighters and their mischief. Still, updating the old notion that the Earp myth is the American Iliad, the author is at his best when he delineates those fraught spasms of violence. “It is never a good sign for law-abiding citizens,” he writes at one high point, “to see Johnny Ringo rush into town, both him and his horse all in a lather.” Indeed not, even if Ringo wound up killing himself and law-abiding Tombstone faded into obscurity when the silver played out.
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21458-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
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