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Loosely based on the RealLife story of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menahem_Mendel_Beilis Menahem Beilis]], who was charged with ritual murder by the tsarist government in 1913. Adapted [[TheFilmOfTheBook into a film]] by Creator/JohnFrankenheimer in 1968, starring Alan Bates, Creator/DirkBogarde, Creator/ElizabethHartman, and Creator/IanHolm, and Creator/DavidWarner. No relation to trope TheFixer or television series ''Series/TheFixer''.
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Loosely based on the RealLife story of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menahem_Mendel_Beilis Menahem Beilis]], who was charged with ritual murder by the tsarist government in 1913. Adapted into a [[TheFilmOfTheBook into a 1968 film]] directed by Creator/JohnFrankenheimer in 1968, and starring Alan Bates, Creator/AlanBates, Creator/DirkBogarde, Creator/ElizabethHartman, and Creator/IanHolm, and Creator/DavidWarner. No relation to trope TheFixer or television series ''Series/TheFixer''.
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Yakov Bok is a "fixer", or rather, a handyman. He is also a Jew living in Ukraine in the early years of the 20th century, so he has to face the violent, government-sponsored anti-Semitism of UsefulNotes/TsaristRussia. Finding himself at loose ends after his adulterous wife left him, Yakov leaves his village for Kiev, looking for work. This is extremely dangerous, since Russian state policy closely limits where Jews are allowed to live, but he goes anyway. He adopts the more Russian-sounding pseudonym "Yakov Dolgushev", but he still lacks papers that say he's not Jewish, and he has a Yiddish accent.
to:
Yakov Bok is a "fixer", or rather, a handyman. He is also a Jew living in Ukraine in the early years of the 20th century, so he has to face the violent, government-sponsored anti-Semitism of UsefulNotes/TsaristRussia. Finding himself at loose ends after his adulterous wife left him, Yakov leaves his village for Kiev, looking for work. This is extremely dangerous, dangerous since Russian state policy closely limits where Jews are allowed to live, but he goes anyway. He adopts the more Russian-sounding pseudonym "Yakov Dolgushev", but he still lacks papers that say he's not Jewish, and he has a Yiddish accent.
Changed line(s) 9,10 (click to see context) from:
Loosely based on the RealLife story of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menahem_Mendel_Beilis Menahem Beilis]], who was charged with ritual murder by the tsarist government in 1913. Adapted [[TheFilmOfTheBook into a film]] by Creator/JohnFrankenheimer in 1968, starring Alan Bates, Dirk Bogarde, Creator/ElizabethHartman, and Creator/IanHolm, and Creator/DavidWarner. No relation to trope TheFixer or television series ''Series/TheFixer''.
to:
Loosely based on the RealLife story of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menahem_Mendel_Beilis Menahem Beilis]], who was charged with ritual murder by the tsarist government in 1913. Adapted [[TheFilmOfTheBook into a film]] by Creator/JohnFrankenheimer in 1968, starring Alan Bates, Dirk Bogarde, Creator/DirkBogarde, Creator/ElizabethHartman, and Creator/IanHolm, and Creator/DavidWarner. No relation to trope TheFixer or television series ''Series/TheFixer''.
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* ConscienceMakesYouGoBack: When Yakov sees Nikolai Lebedev pass out and fall down drunk in the snow, he is at first inclined to let him lie there and die of hypothermia, since Yakov spotted the Black Hundreds pin on his coat. But instead he picks Nikolai up. This changes his life in a lot of ways, at first for the better and then for the much worse.
* HopeSpot: Bibikov visits Yakov in jail, and reveals that he's basically solved the case--the mother's scumbag boyfriend and his criminal partners killed the boy for threatening to rat them out, and the mother knows and may have helped. He also says that he's going to get the fixer a lawyer and go to the press. Soon after Bibikov has been chucked into another cell on the fixer's block, and soon after that he's hanging by his belt from the ceiling.
* HopeSpot: Bibikov visits Yakov in jail, and reveals that he's basically solved the case--the mother's scumbag boyfriend and his criminal partners killed the boy for threatening to rat them out, and the mother knows and may have helped. He also says that he's going to get the fixer a lawyer and go to the press. Soon after Bibikov has been chucked into another cell on the fixer's block, and soon after that he's hanging by his belt from the ceiling.
to:
* ConscienceMakesYouGoBack: When Yakov sees Nikolai Lebedev pass out and fall down drunk in the snow, he is at first inclined to let him lie there and die of hypothermia, hypothermia since Yakov spotted the Black Hundreds pin on his coat. But instead he picks Nikolai up. This changes his life in a lot of ways, at first for the better and then for the much worse.
* HopeSpot: Bibikov visits Yakov in jail, and reveals that he's basically solved the case--the mother's scumbag boyfriend and his criminal partners killed the boy for threatening to rat them out, and the mother knows and may have helped. He also says that he's going to get the fixer a lawyer and go to the press. Soon after Bibikov has been chucked into another cell on the fixer's block, and soon afterthat that, he's hanging by his belt from the ceiling.
* HopeSpot: Bibikov visits Yakov in jail, and reveals that he's basically solved the case--the mother's scumbag boyfriend and his criminal partners killed the boy for threatening to rat them out, and the mother knows and may have helped. He also says that he's going to get the fixer a lawyer and go to the press. Soon after Bibikov has been chucked into another cell on the fixer's block, and soon after
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Changed line(s) 9,10 (click to see context) from:
Loosely based on the RealLife story of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menahem_Mendel_Beilis Menahem Beilis]], who was charged with ritual murder by the tsarist government in 1913. Adapted [[TheFilmOfTheBook into a film]] by Creator/JohnFrankenheimer in 1968, starring Alan Bates, Dirk Bogarde, Creator/DavidWarner and Creator/IanHolm. No relation to trope TheFixer or television series ''Series/TheFixer''.
to:
Loosely based on the RealLife story of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menahem_Mendel_Beilis Menahem Beilis]], who was charged with ritual murder by the tsarist government in 1913. Adapted [[TheFilmOfTheBook into a film]] by Creator/JohnFrankenheimer in 1968, starring Alan Bates, Dirk Bogarde, Creator/DavidWarner Creator/ElizabethHartman, and Creator/IanHolm.Creator/IanHolm, and Creator/DavidWarner. No relation to trope TheFixer or television series ''Series/TheFixer''.
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Changed line(s) 9,10 (click to see context) from:
Loosely based on the RealLife story of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menahem_Mendel_Beilis Menahem Beilis]], who was charged with ritual murder by the tsarist government in 1913. No relation to trope TheFixer or television series ''Series/TheFixer''.
to:
Loosely based on the RealLife story of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menahem_Mendel_Beilis Menahem Beilis]], who was charged with ritual murder by the tsarist government in 1913. Adapted [[TheFilmOfTheBook into a film]] by Creator/JohnFrankenheimer in 1968, starring Alan Bates, Dirk Bogarde, Creator/DavidWarner and Creator/IanHolm. No relation to trope TheFixer or television series ''Series/TheFixer''.
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* ImagineSpot: Many, especially as the time of Yakov's imprisonment stretches into years. At the very end of the novel, as he's being taken to court for his trial, Yakov has a daydream in which he executes the Tsar for his crimes.
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* NeverSuicide: Bibikov is the one investigator who wasn't a raging anti-Semite and who discovered the truth of the murder--the boy was killed by his criminal mother and her criminal boyfriend. He is imprisoned in a cell next to Yakov and then murdered, the crime staged to look like he hanged himself.
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* SwitchingPOV: Most of the book is told from Yakov's third-person limited POV, but one chapter, a flashback where he's thinking about his marriage, is told by Yakov directly in first-person singular.
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* HopeSpot: Bibikov visits Yakov in jail, and reveals that he's basically solved the case--the mother's scumbag boyfriend and his criminal partners killed the boy for threatening to rat them out, and the mother knows and may have helped. He also says that he's going to get the fixer a lawyer and go to the press. Soon after Bibikov has been chucked into another cell on the fixer's block, and soon after that he's hanging by his belt from the ceiling.
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* SlaveryIsASpecialKindOfEvil: Bibikov reflects on Russia's lack of progress, and associates it with serfdom.
--> '''Bibikov''': There's something cursed, it seems to me, about a country where men have owned other men as property. The stink of that corruption never escapes the soul, and it is the stink of future evil.
--> '''Bibikov''': There's something cursed, it seems to me, about a country where men have owned other men as property. The stink of that corruption never escapes the soul, and it is the stink of future evil.
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Yakov gets a huge break when he saves a very drunk man, one Nikolai Lebedev, who had passed out in the snow. Lebedev, who is a prosperous owner of a brick factory, hires Yakov to be manager of the factory. (Lebedev is a member of the rabidly anti-Semitic "[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Hundreds Black Hundreds]]" group, but does not ask Yakov for his papers.) Things are going great...until an 11-year-old boy is murdered. Deranged anti-Semitic paranoia leads to people believing the boy was killed by Jews in a "[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_libel blood libel]]" ritual murder. Yakov, who once encountered the boy in the factory yard and who is eventually sniffed out as a Jew by the factory workers, is arrested and charged with the boy's murder.
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Yakov gets a huge break when he saves a very drunk man, one Nikolai Lebedev, who had passed out in the snow. Lebedev, who is a prosperous owner of a brick factory, hires Yakov to be manager of the factory. (Lebedev is a member of the rabidly anti-Semitic "[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Hundreds Black Hundreds]]" group, but does not ask Yakov for his papers.) Things are going great...until an 11-year-old boy is murdered. Deranged anti-Semitic paranoia leads to people believing the boy was killed by Jews in a "[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_libel blood libel]]" ritual murder. Yakov, who once encountered the boy in the factory yard and who is eventually sniffed out as a Jew by the factory workers, is arrested and charged with the boy's murder.
murder. The rest of the novel consists of Bok's extended suffering in jail.
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* TheStoolPigeon: Gronfein, a Jewish counterfeiter who gets put in the same cell as Bok. He acts friendly with Bok within the cell, then tries to coax Bok into confessing. Bok didn't do it so he doesn't confess, and he's shocked soon after to be called to the warden's office and told that Gronfein informed on him and turned over the letters that Yakov gave him to send out.
--> '''Yakov''': You dirty stool pigeon!
--> '''Yakov''': You dirty stool pigeon!
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* MiscarriageOfJustice: A Jew falsely accused of ritual murder due to the intense anti-Semitism of Tsarist Russia.
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* ShiksaGoddess: Lebedev's daughter Zina, who is in her late twenties, very good-looking, and very lonely. She throws herself at Yakov, and he nearly accepts until he sees from her blood that she is having her period. He leaves immediately.
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* ShiksaGoddess: Lebedev's daughter Zina, who is in her late twenties, very good-looking, and very lonely. She throws herself at Yakov, and he nearly accepts until he sees from her blood that she is having her period. He leaves immediately.immediately.
* StealingFromTheTill: Proshko is stealing bricks from Lebedev's brick factory and selling them himself. After Yakov is arrested, Proshko accuses him of doing this.
* TokenGoodTeammate: Bibikov of the police treats Yakov with respect, asking him about his interest in Spinoza and believing his story. The other members of the police are only too willing to accuse him of the ritual murder of a child.
* StealingFromTheTill: Proshko is stealing bricks from Lebedev's brick factory and selling them himself. After Yakov is arrested, Proshko accuses him of doing this.
* TokenGoodTeammate: Bibikov of the police treats Yakov with respect, asking him about his interest in Spinoza and believing his story. The other members of the police are only too willing to accuse him of the ritual murder of a child.
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[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/fixer_7.jpg]]
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* LeftHanging: The novel ends with Yakov still facing trial, thinking about how it's impossible to be apolitical. (The RealLife Menahem Beilis was acquitted, and eventually emigrated to the United States.)
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more to come
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''The Fixer'' is a 1966 novel by Bernard Malamud.
Yakov Bok is a "fixer", or rather, a handyman. He is also a Jew living in Ukraine in the early years of the 20th century, so he has to face the violent, government-sponsored anti-Semitism of UsefulNotes/TsaristRussia. Finding himself at loose ends after his adulterous wife left him, Yakov leaves his village for Kiev, looking for work. This is extremely dangerous, since Russian state policy closely limits where Jews are allowed to live, but he goes anyway. He adopts the more Russian-sounding pseudonym "Yakov Dolgushev", but he still lacks papers that say he's not Jewish, and he has a Yiddish accent.
Yakov gets a huge break when he saves a very drunk man, one Nikolai Lebedev, who had passed out in the snow. Lebedev, who is a prosperous owner of a brick factory, hires Yakov to be manager of the factory. (Lebedev is a member of the rabidly anti-Semitic "[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Hundreds Black Hundreds]]" group, but does not ask Yakov for his papers.) Things are going great...until an 11-year-old boy is murdered. Deranged anti-Semitic paranoia leads to people believing the boy was killed by Jews in a "[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_libel blood libel]]" ritual murder. Yakov, who once encountered the boy in the factory yard and who is eventually sniffed out as a Jew by the factory workers, is arrested and charged with the boy's murder.
Loosely based on the RealLife story of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menahem_Mendel_Beilis Menahem Beilis]], who was charged with ritual murder by the tsarist government in 1913. No relation to trope TheFixer or television series ''Series/TheFixer''.
----
!!Tropes:
* AsYouKnow: A lot of chatter between Yakov and his father-in-law early in the book establishing that Yakov's wife cheated on him and left him.
* ChekhovsGunman: At one point Yakov has to chase off a hooligan boy who was throwing rocks in the factory yard. He reads a news story about the murder of a boy named Zhenia Golov and realizes to his horror that the murdered boy was the one throwing rocks in the yard.
* ConscienceMakesYouGoBack: When Yakov sees Nikolai Lebedev pass out and fall down drunk in the snow, he is at first inclined to let him lie there and die of hypothermia, since Yakov spotted the Black Hundreds pin on his coat. But instead he picks Nikolai up. This changes his life in a lot of ways, at first for the better and then for the much worse.
* JobTitle: "The Fixer", basically a handyman.
* NoPeriodsPeriod: Averted. Yakov is about to have sex with Zina when he spots blood on her leg. He says "You are unclean!" and leaves.
* RomanAClef: The Menahem Beilis case, in which a Jewish man was charged with ritual murder in a case that drew condemnation around the world. Malamud, while changing the name of the protagonist and other details, lifted some passages verbatim from Beilis's memoir, leading Beilis's family to sue him for plagiarism.
* ShiksaGoddess: Lebedev's daughter Zina, who is in her late twenties, very good-looking, and very lonely. She throws herself at Yakov, and he nearly accepts until he sees from her blood that she is having her period. He leaves immediately.
Yakov Bok is a "fixer", or rather, a handyman. He is also a Jew living in Ukraine in the early years of the 20th century, so he has to face the violent, government-sponsored anti-Semitism of UsefulNotes/TsaristRussia. Finding himself at loose ends after his adulterous wife left him, Yakov leaves his village for Kiev, looking for work. This is extremely dangerous, since Russian state policy closely limits where Jews are allowed to live, but he goes anyway. He adopts the more Russian-sounding pseudonym "Yakov Dolgushev", but he still lacks papers that say he's not Jewish, and he has a Yiddish accent.
Yakov gets a huge break when he saves a very drunk man, one Nikolai Lebedev, who had passed out in the snow. Lebedev, who is a prosperous owner of a brick factory, hires Yakov to be manager of the factory. (Lebedev is a member of the rabidly anti-Semitic "[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Hundreds Black Hundreds]]" group, but does not ask Yakov for his papers.) Things are going great...until an 11-year-old boy is murdered. Deranged anti-Semitic paranoia leads to people believing the boy was killed by Jews in a "[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_libel blood libel]]" ritual murder. Yakov, who once encountered the boy in the factory yard and who is eventually sniffed out as a Jew by the factory workers, is arrested and charged with the boy's murder.
Loosely based on the RealLife story of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menahem_Mendel_Beilis Menahem Beilis]], who was charged with ritual murder by the tsarist government in 1913. No relation to trope TheFixer or television series ''Series/TheFixer''.
----
!!Tropes:
* AsYouKnow: A lot of chatter between Yakov and his father-in-law early in the book establishing that Yakov's wife cheated on him and left him.
* ChekhovsGunman: At one point Yakov has to chase off a hooligan boy who was throwing rocks in the factory yard. He reads a news story about the murder of a boy named Zhenia Golov and realizes to his horror that the murdered boy was the one throwing rocks in the yard.
* ConscienceMakesYouGoBack: When Yakov sees Nikolai Lebedev pass out and fall down drunk in the snow, he is at first inclined to let him lie there and die of hypothermia, since Yakov spotted the Black Hundreds pin on his coat. But instead he picks Nikolai up. This changes his life in a lot of ways, at first for the better and then for the much worse.
* JobTitle: "The Fixer", basically a handyman.
* NoPeriodsPeriod: Averted. Yakov is about to have sex with Zina when he spots blood on her leg. He says "You are unclean!" and leaves.
* RomanAClef: The Menahem Beilis case, in which a Jewish man was charged with ritual murder in a case that drew condemnation around the world. Malamud, while changing the name of the protagonist and other details, lifted some passages verbatim from Beilis's memoir, leading Beilis's family to sue him for plagiarism.
* ShiksaGoddess: Lebedev's daughter Zina, who is in her late twenties, very good-looking, and very lonely. She throws herself at Yakov, and he nearly accepts until he sees from her blood that she is having her period. He leaves immediately.
