Cut Throat Dog (Melville International Crime)
Once, Hanina was a Mossad agent whose team tracked down the murderers of members of Israel’s 1968 Olympic team. Now, he’s the director of an Israeli advertising agency trying to win an account to advertise a new, unisex “super Viagra” that promises not only erections but also stamina, passion, and even love. But on a Manhattan street, Hanina, aka Shakespeare, spots Tino the Syrian, a terrorist he tried to kill in the Libyan desert 18 years earlier. Or not. Sobol, an award-winning Israeli playwright, offers abundant evidence that Hanina is delusional or experiencing a psychic meltdown, but this interpretation is balanced by vivid accounts of his desperate battles against Israel’s enemies. At times, readers might think Hanina represents the memory and conscience of every Israeli, or that Hanina’s endless code names and pseudonyms are signs of his complete loss of identity. It’s heady stuff, filled with unlikely erudition, graceful writing, clever wordplay, and shape-shifting characters and realities, as well as gritty depictions of violence and suffering. Fans of conventional thrillers will likely scratch their heads and give up, but those with a taste for the literary may be seduced by Cut Throat Dog. --Thomas Gaughan