Uneasy with his newly inherited wealth, cranky in unwanted retirement, former Jerusalem Police CID Chief Avram Cohen wants to be left alone to suffer. The new minister of police has other plans. Using emotional blackmail, he coerces Cohen into leading a search for the missing heir to the House of Levi-Tsur banking house.

The psychologically disturbed Simon had some peculiar haunts that take the veteran detective Cohen into Tel Aviv’s decadent nightlife, then out into Jewish settlements on the West Bank, into the Judean desert, and back to the dangerous underworld of Jewish extremists in Jerusalem. Cohen is tracking the missing man, but what he’s really hunting is confirming evidence that the Jerusalem Syndrome, a condition he believes often lies behind acts of terrorism, is at work. It is Cohen’s belief that neurotics who visit Jerusalem and confuse their identities with those of biblical characters or believe they receive messages from God cause havoc–and got him into trouble with his own superiors.

While his longtime lover Ahuva, a judge, tries to calm him, Cohen is brought face to face not only with the mystery of Simon Levi-Tsur and his powerful family, but with his own past and present failures.