Last Bullet Calls It

In this award-winning mystery by one of Israel’s best-loved authors, a plot of vengeance reveals deeper truths about the complexity of being human.

Coupon-clipping police superintendent Jonah Merlin thinks he has an open-and-shut case on his hands after the body of a beautiful woman is found discarded in a run-down building in Tel Aviv. All evidence points to two suspects, but finding them will require unorthodox methods to decode the cryptic words sprayed at every crime scene.

As the body count rises, graffiti expert Rai Zitrin and precocious seventeen-year-old Zoe Navon agree to help Merlin uncover the connection between the killing spree and the words of Polish writer Bruno Schulz, who was murdered by Nazis seventy years ago.

Why would a serial killer quote the famous author’s poetic words of unrequited love? The search leads this unlikely trio on a race against the clock to solve the case before the killer has the last laugh...and the last bullet.

Amir Gutfreund was born in Haifa in 1963. After studying applied mathematics at the Technion, he joined the Israeli Air Force, where he worked in the field of mathematical research. The author of five novels and a collection of short stories, he received the Buchman Prize from the Yad Vashem Institute in 2002, the Sapir Prize in 2003, the Sami Rohr Choice Award from the Jewish Book Council in 2007, and the Prime Minister’s Award in 2012. Last Bullet Calls It was awarded the 2015 Ramat-Gan Prize for Literature. Gutfreund lived with his family in the Galilee in northern Israel. In November 2015, at the age of fifty-two, he passed away after a brave battle with cancer.