The Disappearing Dowry An Ezra Melamed Mystery Book 1 edition by Libi Astaire Literature Fiction eBooks
Download As PDF : The Disappearing Dowry An Ezra Melamed Mystery Book 1 edition by Libi Astaire Literature Fiction eBooks 
Enter the picturesque world of Regency England.
It is the summer of 1810. The Lyon family of London is eagerly preparing for the wedding of their eldest daughter Hannah. But as the women bustle from the dressmaker to the haberdasher, Mr. Samuel Lyon, a well-respected clockmaker and member of London's Jewish elite, suffers a crushing blow.
In the blink of an eye Mr. Lyon's entire fortune is lost. Not only has his bank gone bankrupt, but someone has stolen the last of his money...
The Disappearing Dowry An Ezra Melamed Mystery Book 1 edition by Libi Astaire Literature Fiction eBooks
Astaire is trying to do a couple of things with this book; some worked, some didn't. Still, it's a good Regency Era mystery with a loving look at the little-known Jewish community of the time.I thoroughly enjoyed the mystery. The well-off Lyon family has been ruined. Much of their wealth was in a bank, and in those days there was no FDIC, or I guess Royal Deposit Insurance Company in Britain. If the bank went bankrupt, there went all your savings -- Jane Austen's favorite brother, Henry, was a partner in a bank that failed -- taking some of his relative's funds. Paper money was issued by the bank, not the government, and it was worthless in case of failure. Mr. Lyon had prudently hidden some gold, but someone found the hiding place, and the best suspects are friends that he loves, trusts, and cannot find it in his heart to doubt. Ezra Melamed, the pillar of the community, remarks somewhat drily that if no-one stole it, where did it go? To make matters worse, his oldest daughter just became engaged, and now he has no dowry for her, just a lot of bills for her trousseau.
The setting and characters are beautifully written. Regency Era London is vividly created, and so is the tightly knit Jewish community. We see wealthy shopkeepers and manufacturers, street gangs, orphans that the community is providing for. An unmarried man has all the matrons thinking about a suitable wife. It is also clear how complicated it is living as observant Jews in an overwhelmingly gentile world. They frequent a coffee house kept by a Jewish couple -- it apparently doesn't cater exclusively to Jews. The proprietors don't allow outside food to be brought in, lest some gentile lay food that isn't kosher, or simply the wrong food on the wrong plate. When they travel, they have to find Jewish inns to stay in, or perhaps find a Jewish family that will take them in. It must have been complicated building this world in which they can more or less freely move.
This is something I admire about Jews -- a contemporary woman wrote about her family being exiled from their country, but a Jewish help agency was there, putting them up in hotels, feeding them, helping them emigrate to other countries, loaning them airfare, and although she didn't say it, likely arranging for Jews in their new country to meet them and show them the ropes.
What doesn't work too well is Astaire's "Watson." The mysteries are supposed to be narrated by the teenage Rebecca Lyon, in an Austen-like manner, but of course she can't join Melamed in his investigations, and she often knows things that it is hard to imagine how she learned. There are insertions in the story where she does speak, and they are good -- her voice just isn't apparent most of the time. I am going to continue with the series, and perhaps Astaire will work this out.
Just one thing -- there are three series featuring Ezra Melamed. The Librarything database, which is open to limited use by nonmembers, has a lot of series organized, sometimes in different ways. In the Ezra Melamed series consolidated, I have tried to put all the works in chronological order.
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The Disappearing Dowry An Ezra Melamed Mystery Book 1 edition by Libi Astaire Literature Fiction eBooks Reviews
Loved it....read it almost in one sitting!
A nice story, although a little contrived. It is a quick and easy read that will, I believe, hold your attention.
The book provides a lot of information about what it was like to be a Jew, and to raise a Jewish family in nineteenth century London. The characters were well drawn and believable. I rated it as only 3 stars because the mystery was obvious from the start. I won't read any more in this series.
Mr. Lyon, a clock maker in London, has worked hard and saved a small fortune so that he can marry off his four daughters well and educate his son. But then the banks began to close, having gone bankrupt, and Mr. Lyon loses everything. He takes comfort in knowing he has a sum of money in the clock shop's strong box, but when that is stolen Mr. Lyon begins to despair. Enter Mr. Melamed, recent widower and man of means. What begins first as an intellectual exercise to find the thief, turns into an emotional journey into the lives of his suspects, most of them members of London's immigrant Jewish community.
This was a delightful novel. It contains the economic details and careful plotting of a David Liss novel with the playful charm of a regency romance. I was especially interested in Astaire's descriptions of Jewish life in early nineteenth-century London. East end London came alive in her descriptions of it and I finished the novel with a stronger grasp of the community responsibilities of the synagogue officers.
Perhaps the mystery element is a little weak, but in the end that didn't matter to me. I loved the book's characters and its setting. Libi Astaire has opened a rare window into London's east end in the early nineteenth century and I am eager to keep reading.
It's just okay. I didn't find it terrible, but it's not as well done as it could have been.
As someone else reported, the mystery wasn't very mysterious. I like the setting and some of the characters, but there was something a bit bland about it all.
Ezra Melamed is an interesting character, but we're not introduced to him until several chapters into it. He's not really described very well, physically, so it was hard to picture him. As an amateur sleuth, he was okay at finding out some things, but frankly the author had a stranger practically hand him a vital clue, which came out of nowhere. Knowing something that they couldn't have known, and answering a question they weren't asked. If the stranger really knew that much about the case, they could have solved it themselves. It made no real sense at the time.
I'm also having a bit a trouble with the narrator. She's a young daughter of the family in trouble, not yet "marriagable age", yet somehow can relate events of the adults around her when she wasn't there, and relate private thoughts of characters she has not met. She's really not needed at all to tell the story, and how she has any of the story to tell is uncertain and awkward.
I do have some of the other books in the series, so will be reading those. I do hope they improve and do hope the story is a bit more mysterious, with no more clues just being appearing out of thin air.
Not a bad read all together, but could have been much better.
Astaire is trying to do a couple of things with this book; some worked, some didn't. Still, it's a good Regency Era mystery with a loving look at the little-known Jewish community of the time.
I thoroughly enjoyed the mystery. The well-off Lyon family has been ruined. Much of their wealth was in a bank, and in those days there was no FDIC, or I guess Royal Deposit Insurance Company in Britain. If the bank went bankrupt, there went all your savings -- Jane Austen's favorite brother, Henry, was a partner in a bank that failed -- taking some of his relative's funds. Paper money was issued by the bank, not the government, and it was worthless in case of failure. Mr. Lyon had prudently hidden some gold, but someone found the hiding place, and the best suspects are friends that he loves, trusts, and cannot find it in his heart to doubt. Ezra Melamed, the pillar of the community, remarks somewhat drily that if no-one stole it, where did it go? To make matters worse, his oldest daughter just became engaged, and now he has no dowry for her, just a lot of bills for her trousseau.
The setting and characters are beautifully written. Regency Era London is vividly created, and so is the tightly knit Jewish community. We see wealthy shopkeepers and manufacturers, street gangs, orphans that the community is providing for. An unmarried man has all the matrons thinking about a suitable wife. It is also clear how complicated it is living as observant Jews in an overwhelmingly gentile world. They frequent a coffee house kept by a Jewish couple -- it apparently doesn't cater exclusively to Jews. The proprietors don't allow outside food to be brought in, lest some gentile lay food that isn't kosher, or simply the wrong food on the wrong plate. When they travel, they have to find Jewish inns to stay in, or perhaps find a Jewish family that will take them in. It must have been complicated building this world in which they can more or less freely move.
This is something I admire about Jews -- a contemporary woman wrote about her family being exiled from their country, but a Jewish help agency was there, putting them up in hotels, feeding them, helping them emigrate to other countries, loaning them airfare, and although she didn't say it, likely arranging for Jews in their new country to meet them and show them the ropes.
What doesn't work too well is Astaire's "Watson." The mysteries are supposed to be narrated by the teenage Rebecca Lyon, in an Austen-like manner, but of course she can't join Melamed in his investigations, and she often knows things that it is hard to imagine how she learned. There are insertions in the story where she does speak, and they are good -- her voice just isn't apparent most of the time. I am going to continue with the series, and perhaps Astaire will work this out.
Just one thing -- there are three series featuring Ezra Melamed. The Librarything database, which is open to limited use by nonmembers, has a lot of series organized, sometimes in different ways. In the Ezra Melamed series consolidated, I have tried to put all the works in chronological order.
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