New author Alan Orloff has cre­at­ed a pro­tag­o­nist who is a like­able every­man. Poor Josh Han­dle­man! He recent­ly dis­cov­ered that his wife has been hav­ing an affair with his busi­ness part­ner and now must return to his child­hood home after being noti­fied that his estranged father died after tum­bling down a flight of stairs. Josh is star­tled to find an elder­ly Russ­ian man liv­ing in the base­ment and dis­cov­ers that his enig­mat­ic father was secret­ly engaged to the direc­tor of the Hebrew Home, who is now the heir to most of his estate. He’s left hold­ing noth­ing more than the key to his dad’s safe deposit box, but finds it emp­ty and is aston­ished by the news that it should have held a valu­able col­lec­tion of dia­monds. When Lev, his dad’s best friend, pas­sion­ate­ly insists that Abe Handleman’s demise was no acci­dent, Josh is con­vinced to vis­it the police. That lit­tle for­ay leads him direct­ly into a brick wall, so he bum­bles into an endear­ing­ly inept inves­ti­ga­tion. Think about your nerdy cousin Nate run­ning a mur­der inves­ti­ga­tion while mak­ing funer­al arrange­ments for his father and buy­ing bagels for his dis­traught Aunt Rose and you’ve got Dia­monds for the Dead in a nutshell.