The Man Who Wanted to Know Everything

Mishani artfully alternates perspectives to ratchet up the tension in his excellent third procedural featuring introspective Israeli police superintendent Avraham Avraham (after 2014’s A Possibility of Violence). Mali Bengtson, a young mother in a troubled marriage, suspects her husband is hiding something significant from her. Bengtson crosses paths with Avraham, who chose his career because he believed the detectives in the fiction he loved growing up accused the wrong people, after widow Leah Yeger is strangled in her Holon apartment. Since this is Avraham’s first homicide after becoming district commander of the investigations and intelligence branches, he struggles to adapt to his changed role, even as the initial inquiry reveals the disturbing facts that Yeger was the victim of a rape years earlier and that a neighbor claims to have seen a cop leaving the scene of the crime. Fans of Ruth Rendell and P.D. James will be pleased by the nuanced view of human nature. Agent: Marc Koralnik, Liepman Agency (Switzerland). (Nov.)