Murder Mystery in Jewish Sect

The 12th Commandment by Daniel Torday is a thought-provoking novel that delves into the intricacies of faith, community, and the human quest for truth. While it has its flaws, the book offers a compelling narrative that challenges readers to think deeply about the beliefs that shape our lives. Whether you are drawn to mysteries or philosophical explorations, this novel has something to offer.

I really wanted to like this book, but it just didn’t do it for me. I felt it was really slow and not very believable. I just couldn’t get myself motivated to read it and it took really long to finish.

This was one of those reading experiences where an objectively well-made novel just does nothing for the reader. I tried and tried.
It sounded interesting conceptually. I live all sorts of cult and cult-adjacent themes. This one is more of a religious sect, albeit obscure—an intersection of Jewish and Muslim origins. A community living of all places in Ohio.
A New York journalist in town to bury a friend, hears about the murder of the community’s prophet’s teenage son with the father accused of it and becomes fascinated by the story. So he proceeds to investigate, while also rekindling an old romance.
There, a solid reasonable plot. The wriitng’s perfectly good too. So why didn’t the book work for me? Just one of those things— a profound failure to engage.
Something about the pacing, the meandering of the book, the heavy dense narrative structure of it, with endless paragraphs and monologue-like dialogues.
The religious and historical aspects were interesting, but the overall tone was slow and not especially compelling. Again, likely not so much the novel’s fault as just the wrong reader/book chemistry. Draw your own conclusions. As always. Thanks Netgalley.

It was a hard slog to finish this one. I found the storyline very monotone and a little bland. The concept was fanatastic I can see real skill in the writing but it just didn't work for me.

I really wanted to love this one, I did but I struggled to find anything reeming in this book.

A community in turmoil. The sect's leader's son is killed. Torday takes us on a wild journey creating a novel you cannot put down!

I loved the atmospheric writing and the religious history. Wonderful story.
Many thanks to St. Martin’s Press and to NetGalley for providing me with a galley in exchange for my honest opinion.

I had high hopes for this- thought I would learn something and was intrigued by the combination of murder mystery and mystic religion. Regrettably, he lost me. The mystery is subsumed, I think by the philosophical and religious discussions, most of which are filled with terms that were unfamiliar and uncontextualized. I'm a good sport about that sort of thing but there were just so many. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. I DNF but suspect that others will find it interesting.

The 12th Commandment is an amalgamation on meditations on grief, aspects of a “who-dun-it” mystery, and an exposition of the Donme - a Jewish sect who at one point converted to Islam but retained many aspects of their religious origins. The novel opens with Zeke, a Jewish journalist returning to rural Ohio for the funeral of one of his closest, most outgoing college friends who committed suicide. He is immediately attracted to a local story surrounding the local Donme’s leader (and proclaimed messiah) who is accused of killing his own son. Sensing a great story and buoyed with a longing for spiritual guidance, Zeke initiates contact with the sect and soon finds himself as the messiah’s “scribe.” There is a lot of speculation and assumptions surrounding the rather reclusive and secretive group members; with some very salacious stories shared by the victim. Zeke’s investigation takes him down the proverbial “rabbit hole” with some surprising revelations (no pun intended) concerning the sect’s leaders, the community leaders, the victim, and the politically charged trial.

There is a lot of “telling” in this novel – Zeke has extended conversations with sect members who provide a lot of backstory that allow Zeke to connect the dots. Some threads dive deeply into the sect’s religious aspects and their merging of Jewish Kabbalah and Islamic Sufism orders to shape their current beliefs and practices - which I found interesting (but a bit academic in its delivery). I was also a bit surprised that the book spent quite some time describing rituals (often with heavy drug use), philosophies, and other religious dogma. I could see where this may deter some readers.

Thank you NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for the opportunity to review.
The 12th Commandment is an amalgamation on meditations on grief, aspects of a “who-dun-it” mystery, and an exposition of the Donme - a Jewish sect who at one point converted to Islam but retained many aspects of their religious origins. The novel opens with Zeke, a Jewish journalist returning to rural Ohio for the funeral of one of his closest, most outgoing college friends who committed suicide. He is immediately attracted to a local story surrounding the local Donme’s leader (and proclaimed messiah) who is accused of killing his own son. Sensing a great story and buoyed with a longing for spiritual guidance, Zeke initiates contact with the sect and soon finds himself as the messiah’s “scribe.” There is a lot of speculation and assumptions surrounding the rather reclusive and secretive group members; with some very salacious stories shared by the victim. Zeke’s investigation takes him down the proverbial “rabbit hole” with some surprising revelations (no pun intended) concerning the sect’s leaders, the community leaders, the victim, and the politically charged trial.

There is a lot of “telling” in this novel – Zeke has extended conversations with sect members who provide a lot of backstory that allow Zeke to connect the dots. Some threads dive deeply into the sect’s religious aspects and their merging of Jewish Kabbalah and Islamic Sufism orders to shape their current beliefs and practices - which I found interesting (but a bit academic in its delivery). I was also a bit surprised that the book spent quite some time describing rituals (often with heavy drug use), philosophies, and other religious dogma. I could see where this may deter some readers.

Thank you NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for the opportunity to review.

I started out enjoying this book, but the dialogue wrecked the entire story for me. All the character spoke with the same choppy, disjointed speech pattern. And it didn't follow any kind of logistical style. CP Style uses ellipses to denote speech that trails off, and em-dashes to denote interrupted speech. In this book, those that spoke used ellipses, em-dashes and periods to denote broken thought patterns. And every single person had the same way of speaking. One chapter, a character spoke at Zeke for the entire chapter. No exposition to break up the speech. Just pages and pages of one character speaking with no context.

Zeke wasn't a very remarkable character. Or memorable character. Perhaps because he was the one person who rarely talked. He just stood there while others spoke at him.

This could have been a deeply interesting story, but it just didn't work for me on so many levels.

Wow, "The 12th Commandment" by Daniel Torday is a complex, unique, turmoiled, emotionally loaded spiritual journey. This novel explores, from the eye of a journalist, a religious movement in the Midwest, with cult-like commitment, drug induced experiences, grief, miracles, relationships, and a murder mystery. Certainly, interesting, insightful and captivating. Thank you NetGalley, the author and publisher for the review copy. All opinions are my own.

A mystical faith with a charismatic leader that uses hallucinogenic drugs as part of its ritual–wouldn’t you be intrigued? And learning that the leader is in jail, charged with the murder of his own son for breaking the 12th commandment to not divulge the sect’s secrets, wouldn’t your curiosity be piqued?

Zeke was back in Central Ohio for the funeral of a college friend when he heard about the Muslim Jewish group and the murder. The sect dated back to the 1600s when Jews living in the Ottoman Empire took on the trappings of Islam outwardly.

The sect was revived by Natan of Flatbush, who brought his flock to Ohio. Zeke saw a story for the New York City magazine he worked for. He would stick around to learn more–plus reconnecting with this college girlfriend was also attractive.

Surprisingly, Zeke is allowed access to the closed group and is invited to participate in their worship. Natan invites him to interview him in prison and give Zeke his journal. He names Zeke as his scribe, giving him free access. The AK-47 toting Hasidim at the gates had to let him in.

Zeke is fascinated by the sect’s mysticism that offers an experience lacking in mainstream religion. As Zeke is drawn deeper into the cult, getting high and experiencing their ecstatic state of being, he also becomes a threat to the locals. His rental car is shot at, and his room is broken into and trashed. He has stumbled into something bigger than he expected.

Then, there is his revived relationship with his ex, a lawyer who loved her Ohio home and isn’t interested in living in New York city.

I was glad to read this as an ebook where I could click on words and terms to understand Jewish and esoteric religious terminologies.

Torday’s book combines elements of a thriller with a deep exploration of our quest for transcendence and the lure of false prophets.

I received a free egallery from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

I enjoyed many aspects of this novel - the history of the religious sect (although I acknowledge this is fiction, so taking it with a grain of salt, of course), the characters, and the style of writing.

Thank you to the publisher and to NetGalley for the advance copy to read and review.

The cover of this book drew me in as I recognized that it was about Hasidic Judaism and Kabbalah, and the author is a well-respected Jewish writer. Zeke, a young NY Jewish journalist, travels to Ohio for the funeral of one of his college buddies. He rekindles a relationship with a college girlfriend, Johanna, and decides to extend his stay once he learns of an intriguing situation among the local Hasidic community. Further investigation reveals a murder mystery that he decides would make a good story with the murder victim's father and community leader being incarcerated for the crime. The local Hasidic group is a very esoteric sect called the Dönme, a group of crypto-Jews going back to the Ottoman Empire who converted outwardly to Islam but retained their Jewish faith and Kabbalistic beliefs in secret. The 12th Commandment is very similar to the first rule of Fight Club, don't mention what goes on here. It's the details of the sect's behavior that don't sit well with me because I am an observant Jew and know more than my fair share of Hasidim. They are for the most part, "conservative in the front, party in the back." They like to drink alcohol, but the stuff in this book these Jews are up to is not quite kosher. I felt like I did when I was invited to a seder and then found when I got there it was a Jews for Jesus seder. My take is these people are confused but this is fiction so let's give the author some room to run with it. So with that said, the main plot is believable and I had to look up who the Dönme were and what Lurianic Kabbalah was. The style of writing is very, very Jewish with much discussion focusing on the different possible meanings of words and storytelling to get a point across Overall I enjoyed the book, but there was an anti-Semitism that runs through the narrative where the Dönme are called freaks and other negative terms, and their leader Natan of Flatbush is referred to as a false prophet. My problem is most of the literature published in the United States that deals with the Jewish culture either focus on the Holocaust or people trying to leave the Orthodox community. There is a wide breadth and depth to the Jewish experience beyond genocide and repression that is represented in American films of the Safdie brothers or Israeli television and films such as Shitsel where Jewish families find joy in their families and their lifestyle. (less)