{"id":20468,"date":"2025-02-10T19:44:21","date_gmt":"2025-02-11T00:44:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=20468"},"modified":"2025-02-10T19:44:21","modified_gmt":"2025-02-11T00:44:21","slug":"the-last-dark-place-by-stuart-m-kaminsky","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=20468","title":{"rendered":"‘The Last Dark Place,’ by Stuart M. Kaminsky"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\u201cDon\u2019t try to understand them,\u201d said Lieberman. \u201cJust rope those cows and brand them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWisdom according to Rawhide <\/em>reruns,\u201d said Bill with a smile.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDon\u2019t knock it,\u201d said Lieberman. \u201cOne can learn much from the Scriptures and reruns in the middle of the night. The gift of insomniacs. God keeps up awake when we want to sleep so we can glean knowledge from the secret messages sung by Frankie Laine.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t know why<\/strong> I\u2019m not more fascinated by the late Stuart M. Kaminsky\u2019s Lieberman novels. They\u2019re fairly easygoing mysteries, heavy on character. Not more violent than necessary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet they\u2019re deceptive. There\u2019s a lot of realism here \u2013 a profoundly Jewish understanding of the world as a dangerous, corrupt place where one needs to try to get along as peacefully and mercifully as possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In The Last Dark Place,<\/a><\/em> Inspector Abe Lieberman of the Chicago police is boarding a plane in Yuma, Arizona, escorting a hit man who\u2019s handcuffed to him. Suddenly an airport custodian pulls a pistol and shoots the prisoner dead. The custodian in turn is shot and arrested, but he can\u2019t provide much information about who hired him to carry out the hit. Finding the answer to that question will be Lieberman\u2019s next job.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Along with preventing a gang war between Chinese and Hispanic gangs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And, perhaps most difficult of all, organizing and paying for his grandson\u2019s bar mitzvah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Lieberman books are deceptive. They seem mostly quiet, even cozy. But they are mercilessly realistic, and Lieberman is an ancient kind of law enforcer \u2013 almost like the Judges of the Old Testament. As often as not he brokers street justice, even setting up the odd extrajudicial execution. For Lieberman it\u2019s about people and community most of all, and sometimes the law just doesn\u2019t understand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Last Dark Place<\/em> is really a fine police story, for those of us who like our mysteries quiet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cDon\u2019t try to understand them,\u201d said Lieberman. \u201cJust rope those cows and brand them.\u201d \u201cWisdom according to Rawhide reruns,\u201d said Bill with a smile. \u201cDon\u2019t knock it,\u201d said Lieberman. \u201cOne can learn much from the Scriptures and reruns in the middle of the night. The gift of insomniacs. God keeps up awake when we want … Continue reading ‘The Last Dark Place,’ by Stuart M. Kaminsky<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[7,15],"tags":[4721,2695,5459],"class_list":["post-20468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction","category-reviews","tag-abe-lieberman","tag-stuart-m-kaminsky","tag-the-last-dark-place"],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20468"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20468\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20470,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20468\/revisions\/20470"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}