Shulamit Lapid

Shulamit Lapid (born 1934, Tel Aviv|) - one of the best-known Israeli novelists of her generation who has written fiction, historical novels, detective novels, plays, children’s books, poetry, and essays. While historical fiction, social novels and plays are her best-known works, crime and mystery fiction form a significant and influential part of her career. She has been credited with helping to popularize modern Israeli detective fiction in the late 1980s and 1990s. Her crime fiction is centered on the character Lizzy Badihi, a Beersheba journalist who repeatedly becomes involved in investigations. Lapid’s mysteries are often described as combining crime plots with social observation, especially concerning ethnic tensions, gender roles, and life in Israel’s periphery rather than in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem.

The Badihi series includes six crime novels: Mekomon (Local Paper, 1989); Pityon (Bait, 1991); HaTakhshit (The Gem, 1992); Hol Ba-Einayim (Sand in the Eyes, 1997); Pilegesh Ba-Giv’a (Concubine on the Hill, 2000); and Sof Onat Ha-Limonim (End of the Season, 2007). While the series has been translated into German, no English translations have appeared. Other novels by Lapid have been translated into English. “Cozy” mysteries are rare in Israeli crime fiction, and Lapid is as close as any major author comes to that designation. Like cozy protagonists, Lizzy Badihi is an amateur sleuth operating almost haphazardly to solve mysteries which cross her path by chance, with minimal violence and “noir” elements, and lots of humour and local social networks. Nonetheless, Lapid’s novels feature more hard-edged social criticism and contemporary controversies than is common in the “cozy” genre. [based on ChatGPT]