HIP SET
published 2021
Oscar Orleans is a Congolese refugee in Israel. He’s also the only Hebrew-speaking liaison to the African refugee community living in Tel Aviv’s worst slum. When his old friend Inspector Kobi Sambinsky of the Asylum Unit calls him early on Shabbat morning, he knows something is wrong. A young South Sudanese immigrant, barely eighteen years old, has been found murdered in the city’s most iconic waterfront building. He is a recent arrival, and no one can quite place his origins. The only clue is his unusual name, Kinga, which he shared with both another refugee from eight years earlier and a controversial political figure in South Sudan’s most dangerous warring faction. Together, Inspector Sambinsky and Oscar Orleans must venture into the heart of Tel Aviv's secretive Sudanese underground, Israel’s hyper-violent Russian mob, and a mystery that has been laying dormant for years near the shores of the Dead Sea.
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About: Michael Fertik
"Michael Fertik's novel Hip Set is not only a thrilling detective story but also a literary inquiry into the sacred and the profane."
— Sandra Squire Fluck, bookscover2cover —
"Fertik is much too disciplined an author to deal in stereotypes in Hip Set: His characters project the verisimilitude of those persons who live in the secular world and aspire to the sacred, as well as those who live in the secular world and sink to the profane."
— Sandra Squire Fluck, bookscover2cover —