Fine Art Photograper and Photojournalist

Time again for the mystery fiction cosmos to embrace a new rabbinic sleuth. Rabbi David Small’s 1964 debut in bestselling Friday the Rabbi Slept Late earned author Harry Kemelman an Edgar and led to eleven more bestsellers. Now comes Marvin J. Wolf’s Rabbi Ben, master of Torah, Talmud and Taekwondo, a computer whiz and discerning student of human nature.

A knight errant and roving troubleshooter, Ben’s clientele invite him into situations where police are unwelcome and discretion is paramount. In The Tattooed Rabbi he’s hired by the leaders of a troubled suburban Los Angeles synagogue who discover $3 million in the temple’s bank account. They wonder if their prayers have been answered—until the money evaporates as quickly as it appeared. An accounting anomaly? Or is there another, more sinister explanation?

Young, single and handsome—in a short, redheaded kind of way—the congregation’s divorcees and unhappy wives scheme to extend his stay, preferably in their beds. Ben gently fends off their advances; he harbors as many secrets as the synagogue leadership

About the time Ben discovers that little is as it seems at Temple Beit Joseph, he’s arrested for the murder of the synagogue’s beautiful administrator. Released for lack of evidence, he plunges into a dangerously confusing world of mirrors where friends become foes, no one can be trusted and his new best buddy tries to send him up the river. Ben’s investigation leads him to a decrepit cemetery, an opaquely mysterious private bank, a shofar-blowing, part-Korean but all-Jewish cabinet-maker, a Latino gang-banger, and the ultimate in money laundering techniques. Along the way this heroic-but-very human character survives a hit-and-run murder attempt, defuses a bomb in his living room and wriggles out of his intended early grave.

Wonderfully written, The Tattooed Rabbi’s penetrates the synagogue’s inner sanctum and illuminates 21st Century Judaism, but its terrific, twisting plot and compelling, finely-drawn characters are accessible to every reader. You don’t have to be Jewish to be enthralled by Rabbi Ben’s audacity, inventiveness and courage.

The Tattooed Rabbi 

Available as an ebook:

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/97147

Available as a quality paperback: 

http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/the-tattooed-rabbi/18187322

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/marvin.wolf

Blog: http://rabbibenmysteries.blogspot.com/

Marvin J. Wolf learned photojournalism as an Army combat photographer in Vietnam. Following military service, he freelanced for dozens of local, regional, national and international publications, often combining photos with his emerging talents as a writer. In 1983, following publication of his first book, The Japanese Conspiracy, family circumstances forced Wolf to give up the wandering life of a photojournalist for the less exciting but far more important job of single fatherhood. Supporting himself with magazine stories and a series of nonfiction books, he became far better known as a writer, especially after segueing into screenplays, and more recently, novels.

But photography has always remained his first love, and even when no longer making his livelihood with a camera, he has continued to shoot the world as he sees it.