Mike’s Place: A True Story of Love, Blues, and Terror in Tel Aviv

Life is short, so live it up! Everyone can have a good life in Tel Aviv, because anyone can die, at any time. Mike’s Place is the hottest bar in the city and Jack Baxter, a reporter looking to film a documentary about the people of Tel Aviv, joins forces with the good people at Mike’s Place to begin filming, but their project is reduced to ashes when a suicide bomber strikes. Mike’s Place chronicles the real-life events that encumbered and elevated the movie “Blues by the Beach”.

This book is decent; the art style is precise, artistic, and appropriate for the tone of the book, and the characters were distinctly drawn, which made it easier to focus on the plot. The lengths to which the book differentiated the characters was also pleasant; many characters have an interview with the protagonist, which is an ingenious way to establish background and personality. However, the book spent too much time on characters who were nonessential to the story, which, despite vividly bringing the world to life, left the pace slow and repetitive, simply a “Making of” short made into a comic. Perhaps this work would appeal to fans of Israeli culture or devotees of moviemaking.