Introduction: Bibliographies on Jews and Crime/Espionage

Crime and deviant behaviour have always been subjects of universal fascination, and the Jews are no exception, at least since Jacob stole his brother’s birthright blessing by deceiving his blind, aged father, aided and abetted by his mother. I do not share the view that Jewish involvement with crime and espionage, whether in their pursuit or their investigation/interdiction, should be avoided or hushed up, for fear of “washing dirty linens in public” and providing raw material to the antisemites.

At the same time, I do not deny that the times we are living through, when old-fashioned Jew-hatred – whether on the so-called progressive Left or the unreformed Right – is again raging, under the guise of opposition to Israeli policies, have given me pause. On one hand, the antisemites don’t need any encouragement for their loathsome obsessions, which continue flying on automatic pilot, in all conditions, uninfluenced by protestations of virtue and merit. And on the other hand, self-censorship for fear of the exploitation of information by bad actors is the essence of subordination and surrender to evil, which should always be resisted.

In what follows, I have included works focusing on Jews and law-enforcement, as well as on Jews and crime. Often, that turns into an examination of Jewish communal self-defense measures and outstanding Jewish lawyers and judges. The preoccupation of Jews with Law – their own or others’ – has not waned in our time. Crime and law-enforcement evoke rather different levels of interest.

ChatGPT estimated that the ratio of crime-centered literature, both fiction and non-fiction, to law-enforcement literature is on the order of 4:1, based on a broad survey of catalogues and reading guides. Narrowing the focus to Jews and their involvement with both subjects virtually doubles that ratio. The reasons are not mysterious. Crime is dramatic and therefore popular, while the details of law-enforcement are not. The personal memoir of a famous criminal attracts vastly more readers than the memoir of a veteran policeman. The logistics of police work in preventing and investigating crime – critical as they are – make for less compelling reading.

One finding about our author sample, at least about the Americans, who make up over half of it, is how many of the protagonists are law-enforcement professionals (police and private detectives): 36%! Another 40%, including a variety of occupations – psychologists, journalists, lawyers, rabbis and active retirees - are “amateur sleuths”. That does not reflect the occupational profile of western Jews today. Of course we expect crime fiction to feature protagonists alert to crime-detection, and can argue about the significance or insignificance of such findings. At minimum, I’d say they indicate a reading public highly receptive to the image of Jews in crime-interdiction roles.

The Jews are people, just like other people in some ways and unlike them in others, with their own particular heritage(s), and without any obligation to justify their existence. The involvement of some of them in demonstrably beneficial pursuits – in medicine, science, technology, scholarship, commerce, civil rights, law enforcement, etc. – is one part of their story. And the involvement of others in crime or espionage is another. There is no need to legitimize interest in the latter by invocation of the former. At least in the free world, we are past persecuted minority status, with all its attendant apologetic defensiveness, anti-Israel activism notwithstanding. In examining our bad guys, it is unnecessary to remind the world about all our good guys. Liberation means not having to convince anyone that, despite all, we are really ok. If anyone has a problem with that.… the problem is theirs, not ours. I simplify, of course, but it is not really much more complicated than that.

Crime is an inherent component of life and Jews interact with all parts of it, on both sides of the line, just as other people do. This expresses itself in Jewish history and in the fiction and non-fiction about it. That is an intrinsically interesting subject for examination, without paranoia or apology. Enough said.

Mysteries and thrillers are among the most popular fiction genres, as measured by sales to the reading public, and among my favourites since my first encounters with Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes. That might be because they offer a sense of order and the triumph of justice over evil in a chaotic world. The “good guys” usually win. Or just because they tease our brains to figure out “whodunnit” or pique our sensibility to violence, danger, suspense and courage in the face of adversity; or provide compelling entertainment and escapist relief from humdrum daily routine.

Jews are quite well represented in this literary space, whether as detectives, spies, villains, victims, collaborating experts and professionals, what-have-you. I noticed this a long time ago and have greatly enjoyed it, in terms of my own leisure reading. I recently thought of recording it in a survey of the scattered sources that does not, to my knowledge, yet exist. You can’t appreciate the dimensions of this Jewish participation until you actually try measuring it. So I set out to map the territory, for others to enjoy, learn from and expand further.

I started with simple lists of authors and books. When the lists grew longer, I divided them up geographically. Then, as can sometimes happen, the whole thing took off, escalated. The subject is fascinating, if not intoxicating. I began compiling lists of non-fiction books and articles providing background and insight to the novels, and adding more and more authors. And then: biographies of the authors, publication details of the books, and synopses of some of them. And then again: a list of some of the movies, documentaries and television series that have joined the party. In dealing with Jews and law-enforcement, I found myself overwhelmed by the heavy Jewish presence in the legal profession as prosecutors, defenders and judges, and had to limit the scope of coverage. Setting boundaries for what to include in this survey, and what not to include, became a pressing necessity. So here I am, over six months later, with the following six bibliographies and one filmography:

U.S. Jewish Detectives, Spies, Criminals et al – FICTION (206 authors);
U.S. Jewish Detectives, Spies, Criminals, etc. – NON-FICTION: History, Biography, Analysis;
Israeli Secret Agents, Spies, Detectives, Criminals, etc. – Fiction (75 authors) & Non-Fiction;
Canadian Jews and Crime/Espionage – Fiction (14 authors) & Non-Fiction;
U.K. Jews and Crime/Espionage – Fiction (21 authors) & Non-Fiction;
International – Jewish Detectives, Spies, Criminals, etc. - Fiction (58 authors) & Non-Fiction;
Filmography - Movies, Films & TV Series (128 listed) about Jews and Crime/Espionage (listed chronologically by year of release).

Each one of these bibliographies, in the above order, forms a chapter in this combined document. Each chapter begins with an alphabetical list of the authors it includes, for easy reference – on pages 47 (Americans), 281 (Israelis), 349 (Canadians), 390 (British) and 432 (International). The list of authors’ brief biographies and their relevant books in each chapter is followed by a survey of non-fiction books and articles of direct relevance. Because of their size, the American lists were divided into two separate bibliographies, one for fiction, one for non-fiction. The detailed Table of Contents (TOC) provides the best overview of the project and an efficient guide to finding specific items. That is supplemented by an Index, starting on p. 540. The TOC, the Index, and page references in the text are “clickable”: Placing a cursor on the page reference, and then left-clicking your mouse takes you directly to the page indicated.

The obvious question is: WHY? For whom is all this intended, and for what purpose? Without apology, much of it was for my own pleasure. Jigsaw puzzles do not appeal to me, but there was genuine satisfaction in assembling the far-flung pieces of information that make up this broad landscape of Jewish and human experience. Beyond that, what practical use will this serve, a pragmatic criterion I take seriously?

I hope this survey of the tremendous material out there will benefit the following:

Students and teachers of general and Jewish literature;
Scholars and researchers into the areas covered by this literature;
Libraries with, or seeking to acquire collections of this literature; and
The general public who enjoy – as I do – reading this stuff.

If the survey can contribute in any way to facilitating serious research in the field, or promoting renewed readership of some or many of the authors mentioned, it will have been well worth every minute invested.

Considerable effort has gone into providing details, such as the 13-digit ISBN numbers or the older ASIN (Amazon Standard Identification Number) codes, comprised of letters and numbers, of each listed book, in at least one hardcover and one paperback edition, in order to make them easier to access. (Sorry, no Kindle or audiobook data provided.)

I am a lifelong lover of Jewish books, and that is my main qualification for undertaking this project. There are 374 fiction authors and playwrights mentioned in these lists, and almost 1500 of their books, plus over 250 relevant non-fiction books and many articles. This guide is intended as a finding aid rather than an evaluation of their literary or scholarly merit. Most of the annotations synthesize information drawn from publicly available bibliographic and reference sources, such as Google/AI Mode, ChatGPT, Claude, Wikipedia and Amazon blurbs, supplemented by my own reading and cross-checking. The information available from these sources is vast, though not, as they all caution, perfect. Some mistakes may have crept in, despite my efforts, and they are of course my sole responsibility. Please note: ALL the information in the survey is in the public domain – no secrets are exposed.

The classification of authors according to national categories (American, Israeli, British, Canadian and International) does not describe where they were born and raised, or what passports they hold, but rather where their novels or plays are primarily set. Thus, for example, seven of the 21 authors in the U.K. list (Astaire, Fish, Frazer, Hurst, King, Liss and Meyer) were born and raised in the U.S. And thirteen of the 58 “International” authors (Black, Bockian, Furst, George, Grossman, Kanon, Margolis, Mesusan, Poole, Rabb, Trop, Weinstein and Zimler) are American-born, plus one Canadian (Roe).

Many of the authors address different geographical and historical settings in their works and are thus not easily pigeonholed. Where for example would you classify Adam Lebor, born in London, studied in the UK and Israel, lives in both Budapest and London, and has two main fictional protagonists, one a Gypsy-origin Budapest homicide detective and the other an Israeli former-intelligence operative who handles missions for the United Nations? “International”, obviously. So some of the national assignments are a bit arbitrary.

Twenty-seven of the 75 authors classified as Israeli are foreign-born. 30 of them (Abarbanell, Azrieli, Benjamin, Berman, Burbara, Carmon, Drori, Dunsky, Frankel, Friedland, Gordon, Haddad, Hannah, Hasak-Lowy, Hawke, Kaplan, Kestin, Kluger, Louvish, Mandelman, McVaugh, Ragen, Rees, Rosenberg [Joel and Robert], Rothstein, Silva, Sinclair, Tidhar and Wilson) write in non-Hebrew languages, all but four in English. [See the note on Hebrew-English translations at the beginning of the Israeli fiction bibliography, p. 282]. 17 of the Israeli authors live outside Israel. Well over half the total authors (206) are American, together with 75 Israeli, 21 British, 14 Canadian and 58 “International” – 374 in all.

The “International” group includes nine authors who wrote in Yiddish - Sholem Aleichem, Sholem Asch, Jonas Kreppel, Joseph Opatoshu, Isaac Rabon, Nokhum-Meyer Shaykevitsh, I.B. Singer, I.J. Singer and Oyzer Warshawsky. This barely scratches the surface. When indicating the main setting of each International author’s work in the initial list (France, Argentina, Russia, etc.), my description of these nine authors’ settings was simply “Yiddish”, because their Yiddishland artistic consciousness is equivalent to and every bit as complete in my view as the country-listings of the others.

My good friend, David Roskies, Professor Emeritus of Yiddish and Jewish Literature at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, confirms that “there is a vast amount of folkloric, fictional, and reportorial writing in Yiddish on the Jewish underworld.” He shared with me an amusing footnote, taken from a collection of Yiddish folklore and philology, “ביי אונז יודען” (“Among Us Jews” – I wonder whether that title should be followed by a question mark, as in: Among us…. really?? - SS), edited by M. Vanvild and published in Warsaw in 1923. It seems there was a synagogue in Warsaw dedicated specially for Jewish pickpockets, criminals, forgers, smugglers and related persons. A sign on its wall in Yiddish warned the worshippers to be mindful of the dangers of shutting their eyes (the customary Orthodox practice) during recitation of the opening lines of the central “Shma Yisrael” prayer! At your own risk! It is clear that much work remains to be done on Yiddish crime/espionage fiction. See the summary of Eddy Portnoy’s Bad Rabbi in the non-fiction section of the International bibliography (p. 507) for a good start.

The International group also includes novels set in France, Germany, Austria, Argentina, Scandinavia, South Africa, Poland, Hungary and several other countries. All of them, as well as the Filmography list of 128 movies, documentaries and TV series on the subject, need supplementing. By the same token, there is still much to do on Israeli crime/espionage fiction, which is here mostly limited to the authors who have been translated into English. Twelve of the 45 Israeli authors in this sample who write in Hebrew have not yet been translated into English.

I will attempt to highlight some of the patterns which emerge from these bibliographies. While many authors, some of them lesser-known or long-forgotten, are included, it does not necessarily follow that these are representative samples in a statistical sense. I chose them as widely as I could, including classical works by Sholem Aleichem, Sholem Asch, Isaac Babel, Elie Wiesel, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Charles Dickens, Benjamin Disraeli, Israel Zangwill, John Le Carré, Ian Fleming, Franz Kafka, Howard Fast, Saul Bellow, Bernard Malamud, Philip Roth, E.L. Doctorow, Arthur Koestler, Mordecai Richler, Patrick Modiano, Imre Kertész and some of the best-known Israeli authors, e.g. Amos Oz, A.B. Yehoshua, Aharon Appelfeld, Meir Shalev and David Grossman. Except for Fleming and Le Carré, none of them are regarded as mystery/thriller writers. This requires some explanation.

One conclusion from my review of this material is that crime/espionage, far from being a minor literary genre, is in fact a focus of universal preoccupation which cuts widely across and through all other literary areas. An author doesn’t have to be focusing on cops and robbers in order to employ motifs of deception, secrecy, treachery, jealousy, memory and grievance, domination and subjugation, expropriation and greed, guilt and innocence, transgression and punishment, violence and injustice, as narrative drivers of their stories. This is not an attempt to reduce all human interaction to one form or another of “crime”, defined so broadly as to become incoherent. It is merely a recognition of the universal passions and motivations embodied in crime and espionage, which shed light on the broadest array of human lives, values, lifestyles, institutions, loyalties and indeed, meanings. These vantage-points on reality facilitate the uncovering of hidden truths, and the clarification of uncertainties, in circumstances of partial and incomplete information – one reasonable description of the universal human condition. That is why it is rewarding to examine many ostensibly non-crime authors from this angle.

The authors included in this survey were chosen liberally, with a view to inclusiveness but without the pretense or burden of exhausting all possibilities. Readers will inevitably discover authors or personalities or books which are missing. They are invited to send me their inputs. The mystery/thriller category under discussion, as a mainstay of mass popular readership, has existed for only 150 years or so, and there is no need to go all the way back to Shakespeare’s Shylock or medieval religious anti-Jewish screeds for examples.

In some cases our authors have published many novels of relevance (Faye Kellerman with 30 and Daniel Silva with 26 are the most prolific), and in other cases only one or two. The languages they write in include English, Hebrew, Yiddish, Ladino (one representative - Armando Bezés – in the International list, p. 434), French, German, Russian, Spanish, German, Italian, Hungarian, Swedish, Finnish, Polish, Danish and Serbo-Croatian. There are a few Nobel laureates - Bellow, I.B. Singer, Kertész, Modiano and Wiesel. The latter’s Nobel was for Peace rather than Literature – certainly no less a distinction. Taken together, I believe these 374 are a significant sampling of the relevant authors, but cannot claim more than that. Therefore, any generalizations derived from these bibliographies should be treated with caution. They are more indicative than conclusive.

I recorded brief tributes to two late friends of mine – Sol Stern on p.229 and Mordy Dzikansky on p. 257 – at appropriate points in the text. I think both of them would have enjoyed the fruits of this project, and deeply regret that they are not here to see them.

This Introduction ends here and yields next to an examination of some characteristics of our author sample, as a potential guide for future research. I welcome readers’ comments and corrections (to: shelcrimebib@gmail.com). I hope you enjoy using this survey as much as I did in compiling it. I wish to close with deep thanks to my wife, Shoshi, for her incredible patience, understanding, feedback and support throughout; and to my son-in-law, Josh Berkowitz, and my good friend, Seth Greenfield, for their invaluable help in formatting and stitching all this material together. All the best,

Shelly Schreter
shelcrimebib@gmail.com