There is a plot here and a fair amount of action. The protagonist is Josh Handleman, who returns to his home town to oversee the disposition of his father's remains. His father, Abe Handleman, had fallen down the stairs in his home and died. The coroner ruled it an accident.

But his father's good friend Lev told Josh that it was no accident. He accused another friend of his father's, Kassian, an old man who was living in the basement. Abe had befriended Kassian, who was living in a care home at the time, and allowed him to live in the basement, provided that he stopped drinking. Abe was a benefactor of the home.

In fact, Abe willed most of his estate to the home. Here is where it got tricky. Josh discovered that there had been diamonds left to him, but they went missing. He didn't especially care about the diamonds but was angry that they had been stolen. He set about trying to find out who did it.

In the process Josh came to believe that his father had, indeed, been murdered. But by little Kassian? It was hard to imagine. There were other candidates. He did discuss the case with the police, but found little interest there. There wasn't any evidence to suggest that it was murder, they said. What I wondered about is that there was no collecting of evidence at the scene. In cases where it could be accident or homicide, police normally collect evidence. There should have been a photographer, the crime scene investigators, and an evaluation of what was discovered. Instead, the police simply took the word of the medical examiner, who thought it was an accident. We've all seen enough Forensic Files episodes to know these things. But maybe Orloff isn't a fan of that series.

In his quest, Josh discovers much about his father that he had not known, and perhaps a little about himself. I found his transformation not entirely believable. He seems like a good guy with a chip on his shoulder that he has not yet dislodged. I found it difficult to like him. ( )

Josh Handleman has just caught his wife sleeping with his business partner and now he’s come home to Virginia to organise the funeral for his father who died unexpectedly by falling down the stairs in the family home. While struggling with the details of arranging the funeral, sitting Shiva and eating bad casseroles prepared by well-meaning people Josh starts to become troubled by some of the things he hears about his father, known as Honest Abe in the local business and Jewish communities. He tries to ignore the claims of his father’s oldest friend who is convinced that Abe was killed by the man who he’d let live in a spare room in the house but when he discovers that his dad’s collection of diamonds is missing he begins to wonder if there is more to the death than first appearances suggested.

The thing that I most enjoyed about this novel had nothing really to do with the mystery at all. I liked the exploration of the way Josh dealt with not really knowing his father terribly well and having to learn some of his secrets only after his death. There was a genuineness to the relationship here where those involved struggled to demonstrate their love for each other amidst the awkwardness of learning how to relate to each other as adults in addition to being parent and child. At times Josh borders on being a bit of a whiner about his father and other problems in his life but right through the novel he is a credible character, thoughtfully depicted and largely likable.

On the mystery front the book is well-plotted, if perhaps a little slow to get going. However the last two-thirds flew by for me, with a believable mixture of potential culprits and red herrings introduced via Josh’s continued uncovering of his father’s charitable and business interests. Importantly for me the book didn’t go in any of the ways I might have predicted at the outset given the prominence of Russian Jews and elderly Jews in the storyline (neither the Holocaust nor the Russian mob got a mention thankfully).

Diamonds for the Dead is another one of those books in which the inclusion of a map would have helped as several key action sequences took place in complicated geography that I struggled to visualise but on the whole this is an entertaining, fast-paced read and I will be looking forward to the author’s next release, a mystery set in a comedy club due later this year. ( )

When Josh receives the call that his father had died, the last thing he expects is to find himself in the middle of a mystery. The death is judged as accidental and there is no reason anyone to thing otherwise. Except for an old friend claiming that it is a murder, a bank box and a a lot more secrets than Josh expected to find. Throw some diamonds in the mix, some old guys with somewhat convoluted past, Christmas Eve, some snow and bad weather and the scene is set. There will be no detective in this mystery, no police officer going after almost invisible threads - all we have is a guy trying to understand who his father really was.

And the author manages to pull it off. Without falling in the traps of the cliches and without trying to leave any doors open for a sequel. And the final resolution was interesting - once you see it, the hints and subtle elements that can lead to it are there -- but they are not obvious and we don't get to really 'see' them until Josh does.

Finding a new mystery author that does not start a series is rare enough. Finding one that can write is ever rarer. Not that Alan Orloff cannot write a sequel and turn Josh into your small city non-detective detective but there is no indication for that in that book. But I won't be surprised if it happens. But whatever the next book ends up being, that's an author that I keep my eye on in the future. ( )