Jerusalem, that most historic of cities, is seething with its legacy, the futile attempt to determine the future by reenacting past injustices.

Except for that memorable period in France, Levin has been here for most of his adult life. Retired now from the security services, he lives alone a few streets away from his wife, continents away from his children. Adrift, Levin agrees to follow his friend’s wife and discover her secret lover. Unlike suicide bombings, which strike him as incomprehensible, the assignment engages him as one that can be measured and possibly solved.

As Levin watches the woman, Deborah, he begins to assess her as a potential lover might. And when the man her husband believes to be her paramour is murdered and Deborah, in desperation, turns to him with an unexpected request, his own moral universe becomes as conflicted as the struggle between Arab and Jew for the fate of the fabled city.

Joel Stone
Joel Stone was born in Brooklyn. He graduated from Princeton University and was a Fulbright Scholar at the Sorbonne. His first novel, A Town Called Jericho, was published in 1992 and nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. He died in 2007 and is survived by his wife, the poet Dorothy Stone.

• May 19 2010
  The Nervous Breakdown: "This novel is a rare hybrid of thriller and character study."
  
• Aug 25 2009
  Bibliobuffet: "Stone’s achievement in this book is impressive, from the perfectly pitched voice to the relentless accumulation of details of character and place that make you feel you’re bathing in that special Jerusalem light."
  
• Feb 9 2009
  New York Times: "Stone packs this brief but moving character study with beautiful writing and much thought about the numbing experience of living with the constant expectation of sudden death from an enemy you can’t quite bring yourself to hate."
  
• Jan 13 2009
  Booklist: "This beautifully written character study will appeal to both mystery buffs and those who enjoy literary fiction."
  
• Dec 11 2008
  Publishers Weekly: "[Stone] successfully grafts a classic hard-boiled detective plot line onto the complexities and dangers of life in modern Israel in his final novel."
  
• Dec 4 2008
  Kirkus Reviews: "The line between hunter and hunted, like the line between Arab and Jew, is razor-thin in this spare, pensive but never brooding study of obsessive love."