A young woman is raped. A few days later, her father who is sitting in his car outside her apartment "guarding" her, notices a suspicious man lurking between parked cars. Convinced this is the rapist, the father follows the man, learns his address, and surreptitiously takes his photograph. Using the photo, the man convinces his daughter that the man is the rapist. The police arrest the man after the young woman picks him out of a lineup, having been coached by her father.

Of course, the arrested man is not the rapist, but for reasons that become clear over the course of the novel he cannot account for his presence lurking on the street near the victims apartment. Ultimately, however, the rape charge is dropped, since once the police become aware that the daughter's lineup identification was defective, there is no other evidence. But once released, the arrested man will have to contend with some very bad guys who fear he may have revealed to the police the reason he was lurking on that street.

For the first two-thirds this Israeli thriller is a page-turner--a well-plotted police procedural. Then it simply falls apart. It is as if having set up the device of "an innocent man arrested" the author suddenly realizes once the innocent man is off the hook, he's got to come up with someone somewhere to actually be the rapist. So he just pulls one out of the blue. That really didn't make sense.

In addition, the author also seems to suddenly remember he has to resolve the issues surrounding the arrested man's refusal to tell the police why he was lurking on the victim's street, which, SPOILER ALERT, is going to involve an additional crime. Now, this additional crime was a pretty bad one, certainly one deserving of punishment. But the author seems to feel that the man wrongfully arrested for the rape deserves a happy ending. So not only does he get off for the crimes he was engaged in while lurking, his wife, who had divorced him, comes back and they all live happily ever after, and all the other bad guys die excruciating deaths. I found the last third of the book, as the author was attempting to resolve all the issues he created to be bizarrely unbelievable.

Not recommended.

2 stars ( )

A first class read, first class plot, first class subplots, first class characterisation. I had trouble putting it down, couldn't wait to get back to it. An Israeli author well worth following. ( )

LINEUP takes place almost entirely in Tel Aviv though really there is not much about it that couldn’t happen in any decent-sized city. It opens with the rape of a young woman – Adi Regev – on her way home one night. Adi only reluctantly reports the rape when her parents become concerned that she hasn’t contacted them for several days; long after she has washed off any possible physical evidence left by the perpetrator. Consequently the policeman in charge of the case, Eli Nachum, doesn’t have a lot on which to build an investigation. Which at least partly explains why, when Adi’s father presents him with a suspect, Nachum allows himself to use the somewhat questionable evidence to help progress the case.

This is another book I think I enjoyed all the more because I knew nothing of it going in. I chose it purely because it is set in Israel – a country I have adored visiting and in which there isn’t a lot of crime fiction set – and I hadn’t read any of the spoiler-laden blurbs and reviews that abound online (I am heartily fed up with ‘reviews’ which offer nothing more than plot details). So the story was a constant surprise for me. In a way it is a series of sequential stories rather than one single narrative. Though the characters are a constant we move from viewing things from Adi’s perspective to her father’s to Eli Nachum’s to that of the man considered the main suspect (and a few others besides these). It is only really in the last quarter or so of the novel that the characters’ perspectives join up to form a more traditional parallel narrative. I liked the way the perspective progressed because it provided a thorough picture of how a case like this can impact so many lives.

I didn’t realise this while reading but I wasn’t surprised to learn the author is a lawyer. Not just because the legal aspects of the case have a real ring of truth to them (though they do) but because he is able to depict the light and shade of the legal system with more than the average amount of sympathy. This doesn’t mean he lets the lawyers (or anyone else) off lightly, but in teasing out the reasons why this case goes wrong – a poor decision here, a grieving parent there, a misguided but well-meaning action over here – he shows us the complexities of the system and the myriad of things that need to align for every investigation to run smoothly. I thoroughly enjoyed the fact this novel incorporates both the traditional police procedural elements as well as a nuanced look at the legal side of things.

Above and beyond these excellent attributes LINEUP really shines with its characters. From the outset – when we meet an elderly lady who watches the neighbourhood from her apartment window with her high-powered binoculars – I was completely engaged by the people in this novel. Because of its loosely sequential structure we have a chance to get to know each significant character quite well before moving on to the next person so it feels as if the reader has a deeper connection with multiple characters than might be the case if everyone was introduced together. I was wary when the novel started unfolding from the suspected culprit’s point of view but even this character had me completely hooked within a few short passages.

Apparently there are several earlier novels from Liad Shoham that have not been translated from the Hebrew (oh how I curse my mono lingual status) but it looks like there’s at least one more that has been translated and I am officially on the lookout for it. LINEUP is nuanced, engaging and full of surprises and if you’re even vaguely into audio books I can thoroughly recommend Saul Reichlin’s narration.

Liad Shoham is a well-known and respected crime writer and practicing attorney in Israel. He has written five crime novels before Lineup that have been bestsellers and gained critical acclaim. This novel was translated from the Hebrew by Sara Kitai in an easily readable format. The action is not so much fast-paced as it is interestingly and surprisingly presented. Mr. Shoham makes use of what I call, “social timing” to describe the intricate interactions of multiple main characters: Amit Giladi a young investigative journalist, Dori Engel Amit’s abusive newspaper editor, Eli Nachum a senior detective who is seen as behind behind the times by fellow police officers, Ziv Nevo a mostly good man accused of rape, Shimon Faro a ruthless organized crime boss, David Meshulam a murderous underling of Faro, and Rachel Zuriel the aggressive Tel Aviv district attorney.

The social timing involves the presentation of short scenes within chapters that mix the time line of the story so that the reader experiences events in the present, past, and future. The translation is so good and Mr. Shoham’s story is so clearly written that the reader can appreciate the important timing of events. As the plot switches from one main character to another, there is never a feeling that reader has to wade through uninteresting parts of the story in order to get back to the good stuff. It’s all good with each main character (and minor characters) described in enough realistic detail to get a good picture of each human person. I really enjoyed reading Lineup and will read read Liad Shoham’s past and future crime novel work. ( )

This novel is engaging because of its complex and fast-paced plotting, large cast of interesting characters, and unusual setting in Israel. Shoham involves the reader throughout with convincing plot twists and reverses. Despite being rather complex, the plot was credible with several novel aspects, like the car bombing, Nevo’s marital struggles, Nachem’s career issues and Giladi’s struggles with his job. All of these threads came together in a nice package by the end. The novel suffers a bit by not having a clear protagonist. The shifting perspectives moved the plot rapidly, but often left the reader confused. ( )