The Ritual Bath

The Ritual Bath (1986) Faye Kellerman

Rina Lazarus is a young widow with two sons who teaches at the yeshiva and who helps maintain the mikvah–the bath used for ritual cleansing.

Peter Decker is a detective for the LAPD, and is called out when a rape occurs at the yeshiva.

“A rape in Jewtown,” Marge muttered. “I’ve always thought of the place as sacrosanct. Sort of like a convent. Who’d rape a nun?”

“Who’d rape, period?” Decker said.

“Good point.”

The biggest problem, however, is getting the victim to cooperate with the police.

I found this fascinating. I’d been told for years that I’d really like this series, but there are a lot of books, and I of course needed to find the first book in the series and then…

This book was published in 1986, so like The Monkey’s Raincoat there are a lot of things seem really strange (take phone lines being cut–would a modern kid even understand what that meant?) but since I enjoy historical books, this is just a different kind of historical.

Decker glanced at the computers— six IBM PCs, four Apple MacIntoshes. “Looks like some money has been spent here.”

That made me giggle.

And I really really liked reading all the religious bits. Those things fascinate me AND it’s unusual to see extremely orthodox characters shown in a positive light. Orthodox religion (of any type) is often just a shorthand for “bad guy” so the complexity was a lovely change
Rating: 7.5/10

Published by William Morrow

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