The journey of a story. [The Righteous One by Neil Perry Gordon]

I'm going to start by pointing out what I didn't like about this book. We had exposition repeated in dialogue, in what felt like verbatim repetition, from different character perspectives over many chapters. That felt pointless and wasteful, but it did make for a faster read. Also, at times the writing style was simplistic and the dialogue dry and convenient. That said I don't think I can not give The Righteous One (TRC) 4 stars.

Since joining NetGalley this is the second supernatural, religious thriller I've read, the other being The Cult of Eden (TCE). That there would be an ongoing comparison in my mind between the two as I read was a given. Most obvious in difference is the religious focus. Catholicism supports the supernatural lore in TCE and in TRC Kabbalistic beliefs take enter stage.Where the horror is innately obvious to the plot of TCE the horror in TRC comes from the characters. Terrible people are our antagonists, and the way the reader is lead to slowly and correctly hate them was wonderful. Evil characters weren't terrible in overt and exaggerated fashion, they were instead terrible because of their lack of morality and moral self-awareness.

The Righteous One is the story of Moshe the cobbler, a gentle, sixty-year-old tzaddik—a righteous and saintly Jew—who is called upon to rekindle his divine connection to the Almighty in order to destroy the notorious New York gangster and rasha Solomon Blass, a man who uses his power of foreseeing events via his vivid dreams to advance his own financial interests. While Solomon and his son, Myron, seek to control much of Manhattan—its biggest businesses, its police department, and its city government—they find themselves embroiled in conflict with numerous powerful people from both their waking life and the dream world, where Moshe has begun training with the descendants of an ancient mystical spirit for his inevitable confrontation with Solomon.

A native New Yorker and former resident, I couldn't help the associations being made to real life former New York politicians in my mind. As opposed to an text entirely fraught with tension in fear of tension, we had playful scenes and vignettes of daily New York City life in the 1960s. A small community of predominately Jewish characters drove the plot and subplots in tangential ways that always led back to the supernatural theme. And this only helped the story.

I didn't mind that every other chapter was about subplot used to flesh out character backstories, I enjoyed that. There was no sudden scene of horror and gore but instead I found myself disgusted at characters who's actions I felt followed a believable logic. The resolution was a bit anticlimactic, but appropriate for the tone of the story.  Obvious turns were obvious and character motivations surface at best, but I'm sticking with 4 stars because I really enjoyed my time reading this. An apparent sequel, the book was self-contained and a fun read. I learned about a bit more about Jewish theology through the lens of Kabbalah and I do love to learn as I read. So yes, I would recommend.