The Past Is Never Dead

By David Schulman

Book Overview

Gritz Goldberg's life is a mess. He is a middle-aged psychiatrist with an obsessive-compulsive disorder and a foot fetish. He's living in his hometown of Asheville, North Carolina, where he was raised in the Jewish community, yet grew to love barbecue and fried pork rinds. He lives with his ex-mother in-law and still lusts for an adolescent lost love. And whenever one of his patients answers his questions with anger and mistruths. Gritz swears he can smell Zelda Fitzgerald's personal perfume--so what if Gritz's office was the same one used by Zelda's therapist years ago; Zelda has been dead for decades. Just as Gritz begins to question his existence he is called to the Battery Park Hotel to convince a possible suicide not to jump off the roof. He discovers that the suicide threat is merely a misunderstanding. The man involved is T Simpson, who once worked for Gritz's family and carried Gritz and his brother round town for years until he suddenly disappeared. It turns out that T has returned to right the wrongful conviction and execution of Mordecai Moore for the murder of a New York co-ed in the Battery Park in 1939. T knows for sure that Martin didn't commit the murder, but he is tortured because the racial climate of the times kept him from coming forward. But the spirit of Martin is still present in the hotel and seems to guide Gritz as he and an assortment of colorful characters unravel the mystery. As he investigates, Gritz uncovers dirty secrets that involve prominent people--people involved in a plot to assassinate President Franklin Roosevelt and aid the Nazi movement in Germany in the, 1930s. As his search for the truth proceeds. Gritz is framed for the murder of an elderlywoman who is living at the Happy Valley Retirement Community. Then his quest expands into proving his own innocence as well as Mordecai Moore's. Some of the characters are based on actual historical figures. There really was a self-appointed commander of a pro-Hitler militia who published propaganda out of Asheville in the 1930s. There was a conspiracy between major American companies and a German munitions firm to monopolize materials needed in arms manufacture, thus raising prices and funneling profits back to the German war effort. There was a flamboyant senator from Asheville who was one of the most eccentric politicians in American history And of course, Zelda Fitzgerald really did lose her life when the hospital building in Asheville, where she was institutionalized, went up in flames.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0895872900
• ISBN13: 9780895872906
• Release Date: January 2004
• Publisher: John F Blair Pub
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.5" x 1.3" x 6.5"

Customer Reviews

The Past is Never Dead

I enjoyed this book and anyone from Asheville, NC also would. The author knows Asheville inside out and gives a lot of history in his book. I am very much looking forward to the next Gritz Goldberg mystery and hope David Schulman comes through with it!

Yiddish Homilies Add depth

Basking in local color and his Yiddish background, Gritz finds his own way through a complex series of unsolved racial problems and human relaionships. His grit, humor, ethics and a keen sense of morality guide this lovable psychiatrist toward an answer to a long unanswered question: who committed and got away with a long ago unsolved racial murder.

L'chaim

This is an adorable, well-written, captivating first novel mystery. With any luck, there will be a series of Gritz Goldberg mysteries. Thank you David Schulman for reminding me how satisfying the genre can be. The characters, the setting, are all 100 per cent genuine and three dimensional. This is a mystery which deserves to be shelved in the regular fiction section; you never go euwww,why am I wasting my time on this. I was entranced by the yiddish sayings that begin each chapter, and entranced by the humor, some of which is laugh-out-loud. The characteres are three dimensional, the plot is sustaining and the dialogue is, like I said, laugh out loud. thanks, David.

Waiting for Gritz

I enjoyed this book so much that I could not wait to go to the library to get the next "Gritz Goldberg" mystery. I was shocked to find out that this was it. I implore David Schulman to get to it. I need more Gritz.

A funny mystery - would be a good movie

"The past is never dead" is a hilarious book. Gritz, the main character, is a bumbling Jewish psychiatrist with a very complicated home life and a set of patients who complicate his life even more. Schulman's historical description of Asheville, NC is spot-on and gives the mystery a good sense of place. I can see Gritz being played by Bill Murray, maybe. Paul Giamatti (of Sideways) might be a little too young but he has proven he can play older characters. There are more Jews in the book than there are in Asheville. But you don't have to be Jewish to love the book. You just need to love a good, humorous read!! Highly recommended.