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Shaking Hands with Lefkowitz
By Melvin Foster
Zumaya Publications
Reviewed by: Natalie R. Collins
Shaking Hands with Lefkowitz is a mystery with an unusual twist. When a prominent attorney stands over the body of a man, lying on the ground with three bullet holes in back, his life takes a decidedly celestial turn. The man on the ground is himself, and he must help Detective Lefkowitz--a cross between Columbo and Andy Sipowicz from NYPD Blue--solve the murder. Who killed Alan Borman and why?
Borman is a self-absorbed lawyer with the potential--like most of us--to be a truly great person. But also like most of us, he gives little thought to his day-to-day actions, until he begins investigating his murder, with Detective Lefkowitz as his personal guide. In a heaven quite unlike any he has ever imagined, he is forced to go back and read the volumes of his life as he has lived it. He is also faced with his ten worst and ten best deeds. This examination is painful, especially as the man with a "hardened heart" discovers that the smallest acts--whether kind or unkind--can come back to haunt you in the most unbelievable ways.
The worst part of this examination, for Borman, is that he can't remember dying--but every other minute detail of his life plays before him, and he is faced with gut-wrenching emotions and pain at his behavior. Most upsetting to him is one small act of unkindness, when he was just a teen. He rebuffed a young girl that he really liked when she presented him with a dandelion bracelet in front of his friends, and he callously called her a retard, even while flinching inside. The heretofore confident young girl was crushed, and in her vulnerability--something a predator can sense--she became a victim of incest and sexual abuse by her uncle. Her life spiraled out of control from there, and she even spent time in mental institutions.
Despite this new knowledge of his own cruelty thirty years before, and its repercussions, Alan, unfortunately, has nothing he can do with it, because he is now dead. He discovers, however, that as he atones for his acts with real grief and regret, many of the incidents on his "worst" list are erased from his record. What this means for him, however, he does not know, as the place he finds himself in--and the crafty Detective Lefkowitz--is nothing like he ever conceived heaven to be like.
The bottom line of this novel is all the things that Alan Borman did in his life that brought him to the point where he is lying dead on his stomach, bullet holes in his back, in his old neighborhood. Somehow, though, that becomes secondary as this thought provoking book has us exploring ideas like "subtle energy" and the fact that one small deed, however innocent it may seem, can negatively affect ones own life--and the lives of others.
We alternate between Alan's point of view and that of the young girl he rejected, Arlene Jaffe, and both feature finely drawn characters and we watch them both grow emotionally throughout the novel.
Shaking Hands with Lefkowitz is a finely drawn portrait of a man with a hardened heart who looks back over his life and realizes that every small nuance, every small detail, is ten thousand times more important than one could ever guess. I'm not going to reveal who shot Alan Borman, or even how this books ends--this is one journey that a reader must take themselves. What I will tell you is that it is a journey well worth the ride and time spent. Your life will be enlightened--and enriched--after reading this fine novel by first-time novelist Melvin Foster.
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