Eight Very Bad Nights

• Author: Tod Goldberg
• Genre: Mystery
• Publication Date: October 29, 2024
• Publisher: Recorded Books

Thank you to NetGalley and Recorded Books for providing me with an ARC of this audiobook in exchange for an honest review.

The perfect holiday gift for the crime fiction lover in your life!

Curated by New York Times bestselling author Tod Goldberg, this collection of twelve delightful and twisted Hanukkah capers will entertain you through all eight nights of the Festival of Lights.

This captivating collection, which features bestselling and award-winning authors, contains laughs aplenty, the most hardboiled of Hanukkah noir, and poignant reminders of the meaning of the Festival of Lights.

Includes stories by David L. Ulin, Ivy Pochoda, James D.F. Hannah, Lee Goldberg, Nikki Dolson, J.R. Angelella, Liska Jacobs, Gabino Iglesias, Stefanie Leder, and Jim Ruland, plus a foreword and story by Tod Goldberg.

The market is oversaturated with Christmas stories, in all genres, yet more come out each year. I have only seen a handful of Chanukah-themed stories and they seem to come from the romance genre. Seeing a collection billed as Hannukah noir with plenty of humor had me thrilled to start this.

This collection sounded much better in theory than it was in practice. By far, my biggest disappointment was that the majority of the stories had only a passing reference to Hanukkah or even the season. I was expecting there to be more of an emphasis on the holiday itself, and having it relate to the story in some way. Instead, the references to Hanukkah had no impact on most of the stories besides a passing mention. 

I could have lived with that, but most of the stories didn’t really grip me. I’m aware of the fact that it is hard to fully develop a mystery as a short story, but both pacing and quality of the stories were inconsistent. Additionally, I was disappointed in the narration choices—none of the narrators that came across Hebrew words sounded natural saying them, and I couldn’t help but wish that the narrators chosen had some Jewish representation to them. 

There were a few stories that I did like. Mi Shebeirach and Shamash come to mind, and it isn’t much of a surprise to see that those were the ones with the most connection to Judaism. A mi shebeirach is a blessing for someone to heal, and the shamash is the ‘helper candle’ that is used to light all the other candles. 

For most of the stories in the book, I had a hard time connecting with them and getting invested, and some were significantly slower paced than others. One felt like little more than thinly veiled pornography, and this is coming from someone who is relatively hard to shock. I found the differences in quality throughout the collection a bit jarring. Overall, this wasn’t the Hanukkah noir collection that I have been dreaming of, but it did introduce me to some new authors that I haven’t heard of before. 

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links, and I may earn a small commission at no cost to you if you purchase through my links.