Jack of Hearts

Even the most experienced suspense readers will be surprised by the final page of this book. Up until the very end, Ichilov’s book reads like a romantic Tel Aviv novel, fascinating and refreshing. The heroine-narrator is Alona, 27, who works in a bookstore and is an amateur magician. She inherited her love for magic tricks, particularly card tricks, from her beloved father who died when she was a child.

Alona’s daily routine is shaken when a new tenant, a handsome red-head, moves in across the hall. Alona recognizes him immediately as Ron, from her high school. He was three years older than her, and like the rest of the girls, she had been secretly in love with him. Now, however, Ron is interested in her, and a passionate affair develops. The two move in together, and it turns out that Ron is both the ideal partner and the perfect lover. However, Alona is not happy and doubts begin to gnaw at her: Is Ron cheating on her? She gathers evidence and begins to hate him. This is easy, for Alona is good at hating: she hates the clients in the store, she hates children, she even hates her thin body. Childhood memories of her father begin to surface, and she recalls how as a child, her father read to her at bedtime while his hand rested on her body. Finally the terrible secret, the key to her unbalanced personality, is exposed. Now we understand why Alona is planning to kill Ron, stretched out on the bed, helpless, in the midst of an asthma attack.