City of Veils by Zoe Ferraris

This is part 2 of Ferraris’ police procedural trilogy set in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia that also continues the developing relationship between desert guide Nayir ash-Sharqi and coroner tech Katya Hijazi, who met up in part 1, Finding Nouf.

A girl has washed up on a Red Sea beach near Jeddah. It’s hard to tell how long she had been in the water. The fish had worked over her face pretty severely. He hands have been burned, almost like someone wanted to make sure she couldn’t be identified. She was still in her cloak, but the cloak was pulled up around her neck, her jeans were clumped around her ankles, and she had numerous cuts on her leg, sliced repeatedly using a very sharp knife.

Seeing as how the victim was a woman, the coroner calls in a female former tech, Katya, now working in the Jeddah version of the CSI unit.They can’t ID the woman, so they call in a forensic anthropologist to craft a drawing, but Katya goes digging through the missing person’s reports and thinks she has an idea – an independent filmmaker and freelance videographer for local television stations named Leila.

Miriam Walker is wife to one of those ubiquitous security guards from the US, here for the money, but also falling in love with the Saudi lifestyle. To assimilate, they live away from the American compounds in a rental apartment where Miriam is expected to adopt Saudi religious customs about the role and behavior of women; she ain’t happy. She’s been back in the US for a month and her flight back kinda sucks because of her seatmate. After hubby Eric picks her up at the airport, they drive to their apartment where Eric just vanishes when he goes to buy some carry out.

Leila shoots boring background shots for the news shows and lives with her brother's family after her divorce from an arranged marriage that lasted maybe a month or so. Osama Ibrahim is in charge of the investigation and, after his female colleague gets fired for lying about being married, draws Katya into the investigation because a woman is needed to dig into a woman’s past – it’s just not right for a man to be in the company of a woman who is not a sister or mother or wife much less ask sensitive questions about a woman. Even though he is a cop, he has to work within religious restrictions of decency. 

The police question Leila’s family. Her brother is very strict and doesn’t like Leila going out on her own with no escort, just her video camera. They fight often. Leila’s also been filming a art collection for some richer than rich guy from Riyadh. After a few blind alleys, Osama and Katya get an address for this rich guy and when they knock on the apartment door, Miriam answers.

No detective believes in coincidences, especially in Jeddah. So the investigations of Leila’s murder and Eric’s disappearance become intermingled as Ferraris deftly takes us on a circuitous route through Jeddah, the nearby desert, Islamic scholars and rumors of long-lost translations of the Qur'an, and the hidden underbelly that makes Jeddah look far more like Las Vegas than it does as the gateway for pilgrims on their hajj headed for Mecca. This oppression of women and scholarly debates about the Qur'an are the subjects Leila is preparing for her documentary so you can imagine someone, make that many, will have issues with what she is planning. 

I read these 3 books a bit out of order. When read in order, the reader is gently introduced to Nayir and Katya, but the main gist of each book is the crime(s) under investigation. But when viewed in order, the gentle interplay of Nayir’s devotion to Islam and the proper behavior of an unmarried man with an unmarried woman vs. Katya’s interest in becoming a full fledged investigator for the police seem to be at odds with each other, but over the 3 books, they work out some semblance of an alliance and a gentle connection. So, depending of the view of the reader, this trilogy could be seen police procedurals ahead of their developing relationship or as a growing love story between two people with divergent views of traditional Saudi life that just happens to blossom around some particularly gruesome crimes. When I first started the series, I saw it as the former, but having finished, I’m not so sure.

Guess that means that Ferraris is a pretty darn good story teller, able to present police investigations (that violate some of the protections we here in the US take for granted) and a compelling love story, capable of entertaining lovers of blood/guts cop tales as well as those who would prefer to curl up with a relationship tale, Saudi style. If you think you'd like to take a chance on this series, I'd suggest reading them in order: Finding Nouf, City of Veils, Kingdom of Strangers. 

ECD

Finding Nouf by Zoe Ferraris

Nouf ash-Shrawi is 16 and soon to be married. Child of a big and rich family that lives on their own island off the coast of Jeddah. A family pick-up is missing and so is one of the family’s camels. Nouf appears to have run off into the desert. The police are looking, but the desperate family has hired lots of people to look for her, including Nayir ahs-Sharqi, a desert guide/friend of one of her brothers, Othman. 

The search goes on for a couple weeks and hope fades with each passing day. Some Bedouins find her body, alert the search party, and her corpse is hustled to the medical examiner’s office for a quick autopsy so she can be buried that day, per their custom.

Nayir accompanies the body so that he can then take her remains to the family. The examiner does a cursory exam. An autopsy tech, Katya Hijazi, tells Nayir that no, she had not been molested. Cause of death? Drowning. In the desert? But they both wonder why the family wants the investigation and post-mortem wrapped up quietly and quickly.

Nayir and Katya form an uneasy alliance. Not just because they are both good (but not ‘devout’) Muslims and unmarried men/women just do not interact, but because Katya is engaged to Nayir's friend and Nouf's brother - Othman. The two conduct a delicate waltz around their commitment to Islam vs. their growing obsession for justice for Nouf.

Both being amateur investigators, the misread clues and take wrong turns in the investigation, but each misstep leads to an important clue the takes them closer to an answer. All the while being very delicate in their developing affection for each other that their circumstances won’t allow.

This is #1 in the 3 part series of police procedurals set in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia by Ferraris. It was a LA Time award winner for first mystery and deservedly so. Ferraris deftly takes we infidels behind the veiled curtain that Islam has surrounded itself to see a cultural existence that we can only imagine . . . and assuming her description is far more accurate than what we perceive . . . our understanding is probably 95% wrong.

One part police procedural – one part cultural unveiling – entirely entertaining. I’m reading part 2 now. The last time I slammed though an author’s trilogy this quickly was the Moscow secret police trilogy by Tom Rob Smith.  Give this series a chance. It's not just entertaining, it's also eye-opening.

ECD

Kingdom of Strangers by Zoe Ferraris

Saudi Arabia likes to say its high standard of morality is why serial killers just aren’t a real concern. When it’s happened, it’s been a foreigner.

In the desert outside of Jeddah, a grave is found. As the police dig, they find another grave, then another, and another. In total, 19 bodies are recovered. All have had their hands removed, but 3 hands still remain.

Homicide inspector Ibrahim Zahrani is assigned the case, but there are some in the department who think the case is too much for him. All possible resources are called in. First task is to ID the remains. Seeing as how all the victims are female, and from SE Asia, the post mortems go slowly – decency edicts restrict the contact with the victims by the mostly male medical examiners office. Their lack of experience in serial killers leads to an FBI expert to be called for advice. Of course, the expert is female and largely ignored by the detective staff.

Katya Hijazi is a CSI tech for the police with ambitions of joining the police force someday and become a detective, a tough task considering the male-dominated Saudi workforce. She has a lot of work to do in a lab ill equipped to handle this size of a case. She looks in on the FBI’s first presentation, then talks with her later. Katya notices a pattern in the graves, then a pattern in how the bodies are placed.

Another woman has been abducted, this time a well off Saudi national. And her amputated hand turns up on the street. The male cops think the cases are unconnected. Katya thinks the killer has started anew with a new pattern, maybe unhappy that the gravesite had been discovered – which sends Katya back to the site for clues to whether the killer has been looking in on the cop’s excavation of the graves.

Oh, yes. Inspector Ibrahim, married to a shrill, with a bunch of kids and grandkids, and a son who wants a marriage annulled, has a girlfriend – a former undercover operative for the police, and she’s a Filipino and she’s disappeared. And Ibrahim can’t call it in because if he does, his adulterous affair will become public and in Saudi Arabia, this can sometimes mean the death penalty. So he enlists Katya to help do some quiet investigations.

Katya has good instincts and on both cases, no matter what the turn of events (of which there are a bunch), her gut sends her in a different (and better) direction than the detective squad.

Saw this book on the new release shelf at Barnes and Noble and jotted it down thinking maybe I’ll read it if the library has it. Good decision. The book is a solid winner on multiple fronts.

First, as a police procedural, this is a very tightly presented story with significant details and twists to keep any lover of such stories glued to each page. Second, taking place in Saudi Arabia, Ferraris give us a look behind the curtain, or burqa if you will, at a society that most Americans have few facts about. Prepare for an education about the expectations and requirements around work, relationships, riding a taxi, shopping, eating at a restaurant, and life and society in general. Finally, and importantly, Ferraris is one helluva writer. In the right circumstances, this is a one sitting book.

I've learned that Ferraris has a MFA from Columbia and for a while, lived in Saudi Arabia with her (then) husband so she has lived of what she speaks. And happily, I found that this is the 3^rd in a series of books featuring Katya Hijazi. The library has the other two. I’ll be checking out the first, Finding Nouf, tomorrow.

East Coast Don