Janice Steinberg

Janice Steinberg (born 1950, Whitefish Bay, WI) - an arts journalist who has published more than 400 articles. She is also the author of five mystery novels. Her books contain notable Jewish content. In The Tin Horse (2013), she focuses on Boyle Heights, the Jewish immigrant and refugee neighbourhood of Los Angeles in the 1920s and 30s. Margo Simon is the protagonist of Janice Steinberg’s five-book mystery series published in the 1990s. She is a sharp-witted public radio reporter based in San Diego, California. Margo is an assimilated Jew whose religious background is rarely the focus of her daily life. However, her relationship with Judaism is explored through her mother, Alice, who “rediscovers” her faith and eventually moves to Israel to study Jewish mysticism (Kabbalah) [Google/AI]

Key Storylines

Death of a Postmodernist (Book 1): Margo investigates a murder at an avant-garde art foundation.

Death in a City of Mystics (Book 5): This is the most “Jewish” of the series. Margo travels to Safed, Israel, to investigate a suspicious “accident” involving her mother at a center for mystical studies.  [Google/AI]

Steinberg, Janice, [Margo Simon #1] (Death of a Postmodernist [pb, Berkley Publishing Group 1995] B01FIXHI08

Steinberg, Janice, [Margo Simon #2] (Death Crosses the Border [pb, Berkley, 1995] 978-0425150528

Steinberg, Janice, [Margo Simon #3] (Death-Fires Dance  [pb, Berkley, 1996] 978-0425155516

Steinberg, Janice, [Margo Simon #4] (The Dead Man and the Sea  [pb, Berkley, 1997] 978-0425160374

Steinberg, Janice, [Margo Simon #5] (Death in a City of Mystics [pb, Berkley, 1998] 978-0425166154

Steinberg, Janice, (The Tin Horse [hc, Random House, 2013] 978-0679643746