Confluence: A Gidon Aronson Thriller

“. . . exciting, suspenseful, and filled with enough action to satisfy even readers of Clive Cussler and Tom Clancy.”

Gidon Aronson arrives at Rabbi Josh Mandel's home looking forward to sharing a Shabbat dinner. The two uninvited guests who arrive a few minutes before him are not bringing a bottle of wine and their appetites, but bullets for the rabbi, his wife, and their two little girls.

Gidon, a former member of an elite Israeli Special Operations team and presently owner of a martial arts studio, is uniquely qualified to spoil the two murderers' dinner plans. With one killer shot and the other seriously injured, Gidon and his friend, Captain Nate D'Allesandro of Baltimore's Homicide Division, now have a major question to answer. “So what do a rabbi, his wife, and two guys with malice in their hearts have in common?”

Both Josh and his wife Shelly deny any knowledge of why anyone should target them and who might do it. The surviving would-be killer is no help as his ambulance was ambushed, and he was murdered. Someone is tying up loose ends, and Gidon knows he is one of those loose ends.

Gidon thwarts an attempt on his life, but a member of the rabbi's congregation is murdered. And up the east coast, an elderly owner of a clothing store is killed.

Gidon can understand the attempts on his own life—he saw the man who drove the getaway car for the first two assassins—but what connection does an elderly store owner have to the rabbi and his wife? The answer is seemingly none

Is this about Josh's rescue and repair of lost Torahs? Since most of the Torahs were lost or damaged in countries conquered by the Nazis is some fanatic neo-Nazi group targeting the rabbi and his family? Is it a rival who also rescues lost Torahs, but does it for money, and decides to eliminate his competition? But how does an elderly merchant fit into that scenario?

When the Mandels flee to Israel to hide, Gidon knows he must follow them back to the violence he thought he'd left behind. But the Mandel family is not safe, and neither is he until he knows how all the victims are connected. Somewhere there is a point of contact between the killer and the victim—and Gidon has to find it.

The second Gidon Aronson thriller is first rate. It is exciting, suspenseful, and filled with enough action to satisfy even readers of Clive Cussler and Tom Clancy.

While the scenes at Gidon's martial arts studio might be a little too frequent, and the reader may learn way more about karate and other forms of unarmed combat than he really wants to know, overall the narrative moves along without slowing for an unnecessary speed bump. The settings, particularly when the chase moves to Israel, are evocative, and with the character of Gidon Aronson, writer Stephen J. Gordon has created a man's man who will also appeal to a woman.

There's hardly a downside to Confluence and on a scale of one to ten, it is at least an eight.