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THE MARK OF CAIN by Ram Oren. Translated by S. Melmoth. Tel Aviv, Keshet.
455 pp. Price not stated.
DIE A DOG'S DEATH by H. Kadman. London, Minerva Press. 223 pp. 6.99.
Most novelists fall into one of two mutually exclusive groups - the writers and the storytellers. Critics shower the gifted writers with kudos and prizes, while the public make the fast-paced storytellers famous and wealthy.
Ram Oren clearly falls into storytelling category, if sales and movie rights are any indication. The English version of The Mark of Cain puts him right up there in the best pulse-pumping thriller traditions of John Grisham, Tom Clancy and Jack Higgins.
The book opens with a close-up on concentration camp prisoner B7593. Jacob Bornstein wakes up to find the camp gates wide open. Something in him propels his tired, aching body and soul outside, alone. The noise of American planes swooping and strafing reaches his ears. In the burning wreckage of a convoy of German camp guards he finds a crying baby, the son of the camp commandant.
Bornstein has lost one son. He is determined not to lose another. "'No one,' he murmured again and again in a choked voice, 'no one can take you away from me.'" So instead of seeking refuge among his own kind, for whom a blond-haired baby would be suspect, he finds kindness from a love-hungry widow of an SS man. After many harrowing episodes, the Bornsteins arrive in Israel, and the novel's leading role passes from Jacob to his son Michael.
A sudden, spinning change...