Zaddik »

David Rosenbaum is a veteran journalist and was the editor in chief of the Boston Herald for five years. He is the author of Sasha's Trick. He lives in Boston, Massachusetts.

Recently divorced, spiritually adrift, and recovering from alcoholism, Dov Taylor, an ex-cop from the NYPD, is called upon to recover one of the world's greatest treasures: the Seer's Stone, a magnificent 72-carat diamond. The gem was to be used as dowry in a historic wedding meant to unite two powerful, bitterly antagonistic Hasidic sects, but has been removed from the sanctum of New York City's diamond center and placed in the hands of the Magician, a Nazi collaborator and notorious war criminal. In a difficult quest of recovery, Taylor forges a link through time and solicits the help of his exalted ancestor, Hirsh Leib of Orlik— a zaddik and prince of Israel from 19th-century Poland, a country ravaged by war and fanaticism. To succeed, Taylor must commit his very life to a law older and more awesome than any on the books.

Publishers Weekly

Rosenbaum is a writer to watch. His first thriller is big, bright and successfully old-fashioned, bringing to life worlds unfamiliar to most readers. Manhattan's bustling West 47th St. jewelry district and a Hasidic neighborhood in Brooklyn are the smartly described settings into which alcoholic ex-NYPD detective Dov Taylor must delve to find a stolen 72-carat diamond intended as the dowry of the Satmarer rebbe's daughter, who will unite two long-feuding clans when she marries the son of the Lubavitcher rebbe. For both the spirit and the clues to solve the crime, Dov reaches back to his 19th-century Polish ancestor, the zaddik (righteous man) of Orlik, in a lengthy digression involving the diamond's provenance and a disastrous plot to win Napoleon's protection for the Jews. The present-day disposal of the jewel in the finale will strike some as contrived, but the book has many compensations. Rosenbaum's West 47th St. is as authentic as Gerald Browne's 11 Harrowhouse (located in a similar district in London); the villains are nasty on a grand, gory scale; and Dov's struggle with booze is as gritty as Matt Scudder's is in Lawrence Block's A Ticket to the Boneyard . For goyim , there's a glossary of Yiddish and Hebrew. (Aug.)