Yigal Zur

Yigal Zur, the author of this book contact me if I would read his book and give him a review. Before I accepted the offer I looked to see what it was about, and when I saw that it is an interesting book from a genre that I enjoy.
This book is translated from Hebrew, it is a complex book of hatred and love, of friendship and family, of life and death, of religion, politics and many more.
Dotan Naor is ex-Israeli agent that is very spiritual.
His mission in India is to find out who killed his friend, but at the same time there is a terrorist attack in another part in India and an Israeli newlyweds are kidnapped by the same terrorist group in Kashmir.
The plot is very active and I like how the whole story was intertwined. There is a love story.
While reading the book I had the feeling the ambience of India, Kashmir and Nepal. I believe that Yigal Zur knew his geography, the spiritualism, and the different conflicts of the area because he has also written guide books about India.
I was twice in Bombay for a couple of days, but with this book I traveled to places that I don’t know if I will see. I really like books that take me to places and teach me staff that I didi’t know like about the Hindu religion, about all the conflicts and the politics, the Indian bureaucracy.
If you like Daniel Silva’s books you will like this one, but this time with an Israeli perspective.
Yesterday I bought the other two books of the series, in Hebrew, from what 8 know the second book in English will be published in 2019.
Thank you Yigal for contacting me and giving me the opportunity to read something that I can learn a lot and travel to a country with someone’s else point of view.… (meer)

This thriller, recently translated into English, features former Israeli security operative Dotan Naor, whose firm has something of a specialty of rescuing Israelis who find themselves in tricky situations abroad. In his new case, a pretty young woman named Sigal Bardon, age 26, has gone missing in Bangkok, and her family wants her back.
Naor is a cynical narrator, intimately familiar with that southeast Asian city, having spent time there off and on for two decades. If he had to guess, he would chalk Sigal’s disappearance up to a drug overdose—heroin, Bangkok gold. There are a lot of bad ways that story can end, and he knows most of them.
Once in Bangkok, Naor takes a room in the heart of Patpong, a nexus of unsavory activity, and a district where information about Sigal, or the woman herself, is likely to be found, traded, or bought. On a sweltering day he takes a ride in an air-conditioned cab. The driver offers the usual drugs and girls, and he also has passports belonging to Sigal Bardon and someone named Micha Waxman. Naor buys both, plus the information that the driver drove them to the train station. This encounter is too much of a coincidence, and Naor wonders who’s trailing him, who recruited this driver, who’s anticipating his mission.
The complicated plot involving a diverse cast of Israeli expats, drug kingpins, and Thai Tourist Police moves along briskly. Sigal herself remains something of a cipher, but the colorful supporting characters—monks, fortune tellers, whore mistresses, and Naor’s old Shin Bet acquaintances, troublesome though they may be—are vivid.
Throughout the story, Naor hears echoes of his past and the scandal that ended his special forces career. Old companions lurk in Bangkok’s dark corners, but are they allies or adversaries? He takes the pessimistic view: “The past surged up and flooded over me like a sewer that had overflowed.”
Every clue that Naor tracks down solidifies his initial impression that drug dealing is at the center of Sigal’s disappearance. But is she still alive? Her sister thinks so, but says little. The drug lords she doublecrossed think so and want her themselves. Waxman thought so, but he’s dead.
Zur’s rich descriptions of Bangkok permeate every scene and engage all the senses. This isn’t a story that could take place anywhere else, and by the time you turn the last page, you may feel like you’ve been there. And you’ll be glad to have made the trip from the comfort of your reading chair, out of danger and chaos.… (meer)

Book #2 in the Dotan Naor Series

The story in a few words:

Dotan Naor, an Israeli private investigator, goes to Thailand to find Sigal Bardon who has disappeared in Bangkok. Dotan is familiar with the city’s dark side and he knows in his search every path will be blocked but this will not deter him in his pursuit for Sigal Bardon. Dotan is one who specializes in rescuing missing young Israelis abroad.

My thoughts:

Dotan, this tough-talking Tel Aviv private eye narrates his story and his voice inevitably pulls you next to him as we follow him in his search for the missing woman. The dark and seedy side of the city is dissected in all its glory with sensual pleasures and all the corruption you can imagine. This drama is fast moving and is filled with gritty thrills which had me flipping the pages so captivated by Dotan’s pursuit of the elusive Sigal. Along the way he encounters a number of stock characters: a know it all cabbie, a matriarch madam, a drug boss and we learn everything we need to know about the sex and narcotics trade. As the search goes on I had no idea where things were going and if Sigal would ever be found but the suspense is in the uncertainty of no knowing…..and this is very well-done. The added flavour is the exotic locale which Dotan navigates and brings him to dead end bars, addicts with no way out and every form of crime. Things did not stop there, Dotan also goes to place where he has to confront the ghosts of the past…

This is an easy and fast read that delivers suspense cover to cover.

“Passport to Death” is Dotan second mission his first can be read in “ Death in Shangri-La”… (meer)