Crescendo: The Devil’’s Quartet Vol. III

Hold on to Your Yarmulkes ... Anti-Semitism Is Back in Fashion!

As racist and homophobic as its predecessors, Crescendo: The Devil’s Quartet Volume III flouts and derides the rules of political correctness with unparalleled ＂chutzpah＂ as Detectives Starnes and Rodriguez square off against a resurgent Jewish Mafia engaged in the manufacture and sale of a mysterious new street drug taking the City of Angels by storm.

Following the suspicious death of Professor Archibald Budwig III, esteemed Oxford University biochemistry chair and inventor of the inscrutable substance, Starnes and Rodriguez find themselves hot on the trail of the corporate assassin responsible for selling the professor’s coveted formula to the Jewish Mafia.The drug’s chemical structure a closely guarded secret, its unusual side effect may hold the key to the exorbitant price it commands as well as its surging popularity amongst the city’s wealthy elite.

Against a backdrop of growing anti-Semitism, radical Islamic shenanigans, and a gender-bending mayor in search of true love, vice division’s finest duo team with impresarios Jake and Tancredo to coerce, cajole, and exploit their adversaries as only they can, pitting the sordid members of LA’s criminal underworld against one another until a cleansing touch of carnage inevitably ensues, thereby lending a semblance of law and order to the cesspool that is LA-a city mired in failed government policies and undying corruption.

To describe Crescendo: The Devil’s Quartet Vol. III as mildly anti-Semitic would be an understatement to some and disingenuous to others. The author walks a fine line between humorous and hurtful, admittedly giving this Jewish critic pause. I was, however, ultimately won over by the scintillating splendor of Crescendo’s eloquence, numerous unexpected plot twists, and its morally reprehensible ribaldry, particularly the depiction of a Jewish mother-in-law’s murder at the hands of her son-in-law: a mob hit commissioned by her very own daughter! I suggest you get it now for less than the price of a bagel.-Sal Saperstein, The New York Literary Review