Yom Kippur Murder

Ex-nun/amateur sleuth Chris Bennett befriends three elderly tenants, the last holdouts in a bitter dispute with a landlord who wants to gut their building on Manhattan's Upper West Side. Bennett promises to take one of the tenants, Nathan Herskovitz, to synagogue on Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement. But when she shows up at the old man's apartment, she discovers only a bloody corpse. The police quickly arrest Jesus Ramirez, a small-time criminal with a long rap sheet and ties to the landlord. When this suspect doesn't pan out, Bennett starts digging, beginning with the dead man's estranged children and then methodically interviewing every mourner who attends Hershovitz's funeral. She soon discovers that Herskovitz had a previous family that he had kept hidden from his second family and she hears conflicting accounts of his activities during the Holocaust. Was he a hero or a man who would save the lives of the highest bidders? While the plot moves along competently enough, there are few surprises. More disappointingly, Harris ( The Good Friday Murder ) puts Bennett's past in a convent to little use beyond imbuing her with an admirable social conscience. The author also makes some mistakes regarding Jewish ritual. (Nov.)