This is a novel that should have stayed unpublished. I confess that I didn’t finish it. I stuck with it a long time though. Around page 150 I started skimming, but in the mid-180s I just put it down. I might have missed a surprise ending, but this was so bad I hardly care.
Here’s the quick setting: Alex Kertész is a French-Hungarian Jew who works as a biochemist professor at the University of Jerusalem. One day, the well-disliked Ilan Falk dies in his lab when he lights a cigar near some sort of gas. Everyone thinks it’s an accident. Alex wonders though if the fact that several people wished Falk to die caused the death, metaphysically. But eventually department rumor makes everyone think another well-disliked researcher, Elisha Something-Or-The-Other (I can’t be bothered to go figure it out), did the dirty deed. Alex concocts a trap with himself as bait, and Something-Or-The-Other falls for it, killing himself accidentally in the process. Since he went for the bait, everyone figures he did the Falk murder too. That’s about the point I dropped the book completely.
Hannah is/was a biochemist at the University of Jerusalem. For some reason she thought she could base a murder mystery in her department. I can only imagine, but I suspect the department politics are more interesting than the people in this book. But probably not by much. Alex is dull. The writing is dull. There are numerous pointless flashbacks. Numerous scenes of Alex going to conferences and staring at beautiful women. Numerous detailed yet probably highly inaccurate but definitely highly unnecessary descriptions of biochemistry experiments. Other problems are …
Wow. I can’t believe I’ve written this much about it.
Short version: don’t buy this; don’t borrow it; don’t read it. I feel bad leaving the Amazon link for the book. Only people who collect really bad fiction should go for this. But still, don’t read it.
Title: The wish to kill
Author: Janet Hannah
Imprint / publisher: Soho
Format: Trade paperback
Length: 228 p.
ISBN-10: 1-56947-270-X
LC Classification: PS3558.A47624 W57 1999
