Can I say “a ripping yarn” non-ironically? It’s an inventive alternative history, a proud homage to hard-boiled detective fiction, a love letter to the lost Yiddish culture, and a cautionary tale about the dangers of our (real life) leaders whose attitudes towards Israel and the Middle East are colored by their apocalyptic religious mania. And, for all that, it’s a hell of a story that seems to be set at once both firmly in our time and in every era of Jewish hardship.