The Bookseller.com

1st December 2008

The latest picks from the proof pile previewed by The Bookseller's editorial team. The blog is edited by The Bookseller's Book News editor Benedicte Page.

Matt Rees: The Saladin Murders

05.11.07

Tom Tivnan writes:

A blurb at the beginning of Matt Rees' The Saladin Murders (Atlantic, February), the second outing for his crime fighting Palestinian history teacher Omar Yussef, tells the reader that the killings in the book are based on real
life, only the names have been changed.
 
Atlantic need not have bothered with the disclaimer. Though the level of violence is at times over the top, in Rees' hands, the Gaza-set story is utterly believable. Rees worked as a Time correspondent for the Middle East for six years and his insider knowledge of the place is obvious. He depicts a lawless land, riven with internecine feuding, smugglers and corrupt politicians. Perfect, then, for a crime novel.
 
The story begins with Yussef, who works for a UN sponsored school, arriving in Gaza on a school inspection tour from his native Bethlehem to find a fellow teacher falsely imprisoned. Yussef and UN colleagues Magnus Wallander and James Cree decide to investigate. Soon, they are plunged headlong into a deadly power struggle between rival factions, Wallander is kidnapped and the bodies begin to pile up.
 
The plot is full of intricate twists and turns, helped along by Rees' depiction of Gaza as a confusing and bewildering place even to a Palestinian like Yussef. But what makes the story compelling is Yussef himself, a paunchy, unassuming family man who misses his wife, yet is driven by a burning desire to see justice done.
 
Strangely, the only false notes are with Rees' one-dimensional Western characters. The dry technocrat Swede Wallander (Rees'  tip of the chapeau to Henning Mankell, surely) reads like he has been constructed from an Ikea identikit. And the Scot Cree is a walking Tartan stereotype, as if he has leapt into Gaza from the pages of Whisky Galore, complete with calling
people "laddie."
 
Still, these are minor quibbles. The Saladin Murders is a cracking, atmospheric read.