Hear, O Israel

An Israeli mother, grieving at the loss of her only son in the Second Lebanon War, and an American journalist searching for the truth about his long-lost father team up in Wallace's middling political thriller. Noa Kagan, a scientist at a nuclear research center, is devastated to learn that her beloved Sasha burned to death when a missile hit his tank, and ends up blaming her country rather than Hezbollah. Meanwhile, Alan Raskin investigates the death of his biological father, a British lawyer with the Palestine civil administration, who was killed years earlier in a hit-and-run accident in Jerusalem. Raskin learns that two of the men directly responsible for the death are now highly respected citizens of Israel. His quest for information about his father ends up coinciding with Kagan's desire to strike back at the Israeli government. Wallace throws in some political intrigue, but the novel might have been better served had the author chosen one plot line and developed it more fully.