By Dennis Fischman

An insular religious community is a great setting for a cozy mystery. Look at the Cambridge Friends in Quaker Silence for one example, and the Kate Burkholder series, set in Amish Country. In both cases, the number of suspects is manageable for the reader who’s trying to solve the mystery first. Solving the mystery involves learning a lot about the community it’s set in. That also applies to Jewish communities like the one Faye Kellerman writes about in The Ritual Bath and its many sequels.

Broken Faith: A Story of Murder, Secrets, and a Catskills Synagogue by Mordechai Luchins. Ben Yehuda Press, 2026.

Another, more recent mystery that takes place in an Orthodox Jewish community is Broken Faith: A Story of Murder, Secrets, and a Catskills Synagogue. When you read this book, you will uncover the secrets of two rabbinical families in a small town in the Catskills, including a long-forgotten motive for murder. You will find out “whodunnit” but also how, with a novel solution to the classic locked-room mystery. It’s a twisty, turny little story that drew me right in and kept me turning the pages.

When you read it, you will also meet Sheriff Em, short for Emunah, a wisecracking Jewish woman whose past is a bit of a mystery of its own. (I hope more about her will come out in future books!) She’s a science fiction reader, and apparently, so is author Mordechai Luchins, because there are two or three people in town who have unusual psychic gifts. The gifts are not absolutely necessary for solving this mystery, but they do help Em survive it. And I am so glad she does, because listening to her sarcastic voice is the biggest delight of this book.

I appreciated having the family trees drawn out, although I am still wondering who Rina was: she’s mentioned twice in the text but not at all in the graphics. I also appreciated the witty explanations of terms from Hebrew and Yiddish. They make it so that (as the old advertising campaign had it) “You don’t have to be Jewish” to have a great time reading this brief, fast-paced book.