No Saving Grace

For his third outing, Boston PI Matt Jacob, a former social worker with one foot still in the '60s, helps lawyer Simon Roth prepare a defense for Hasidic Rabbi Yonah Saperstein, whose arrest for murder is likely. During a recent holiday celebration, Sean Kelly, leader of a hate group called the White Avengers, shot and killed the much loved leader of the Hasidic community; Reb Yonah promptly gunned down Kelly. The Hasid-Avenger quarrel is an old one, and neither side is a joy to investigate. Though Matt is Jewish, he has his own trinity of sorts: marijuana (actually, most any drug), whiskey and television; even when his head is on almost straight he offends the ultra-Orthodox Reb Yonah, who is indifferent to others' efforts to defend him. Yakov, the rabbi's adolescent son, suggests to Matt that his father is more interested in the defense offered by the Never Agains, an international group of Hasidic vigilantes. Matt is puzzled to learn that Kelly doesn't quite fit the racist, Jew-baiting Avenger mold. Klein ( Two Way Toll ) takes a while to muster his players and hit his stride, but when Matt finally gets revved up on the case instead of coke, the situation demonstrates enough complexity, depth and surprise to command his--and the reader's--full attention. (Jan.)