Time again for the mystery fiction cosmos to embrace a new rabbinic sleuth. The first was Rabbi David Small, created by the late Harry Kemelman in Friday the Rabbi Slept Late, a huge 1964 bestseller that won a 1965 Edgar. Kemelman ascended to a higher realm in 1996, the year of his twelfth and final Rabbi Small novel. Now comes Marvin J. Wolf's Rabbi Ben in The Tattooed Rabbi. He knows Torah, Talmud and Tradition, of course, but Ben is also a master of the martial arts, an M.I.T. trained computer geek, a shrewd yet sensitive judge of human nature, a keen observer, and still an unthreatening presence who can get people to do things they usually wouldn't. When he has to, Rabbi Ben becomes a Jewish Jason Bourne, a black belt in a black fedora. As a Paladin-like knight errant and roving troubleshooter, Ben is a rabbi for hire; his cases take him into situations where police are unwelcome and discretion is paramount. In The Tattooed Rabbi he's hired by the congregation of a troubled California synagogue that discovered millions deposited into its bank account and unknown object in its unsold cemetery plots. Synagogue leaders 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 temple leadership About the time Rabbi 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 murky, hall-of-mirrors world where friends become foes, no one can be trusted and his new best buddy tried 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 ruthless 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.