City of Veils by Zoe Ferraris

Finished on 6/2

I think this was from the "100 Kindle books under $4.00" list. I usually don't buy random unknown stuff unless it's pretty cheap. Buying random books, you win some and you lose some. This was a win - and I've gotten the first book in the series, which was not available for kindle a month ago - apparently the "under $4.00" strategy is effective. It waits on the shelf for the next occasion I want a book on paper. And now she has a third book out.

Ferraris is American, but was for a time married to a Saudi national and spent some of that time living in Saudi with her in-laws. I believe the book draws heavily on that time. The representation of life in Saudi is very deeply drawn - it certainly lines up with accounts that I have heard.

It is a murder mystery, but a murder mystery tied to the land and customs in which it is set. The motivations, actions, and reactions seem completely authentic in the setting, although they would be meaningless in a western setting.

Curiously, the two doing the investigating are a man and a woman. Katya actually works for the police in their forensics department. Nayir is a conservative Muslim and has continual issues with his association with Katya - although (or because) he is very attracted to her.

The story opens with the return of an American woman to her husband, also American, in Jeddah. She is unhappy in Saudi and unhappy in her marriage and on the evening she returns, her husband "goes out for a pack of cigarettes" and never returns. Then there is the body of a young woman in the morgue, assumed by the police to be the result of a "housemaid killing." It seems that female servants are of so little consequence that although the practice is officially deplored, men can kill them and dispose of them with impunity.

It seemed to take quite a while for the two story lines to merge, but when they did, the pace was almost breathtaking.

In addition to the cultural and religious aspects of life in Saudi Arabia, Ferraris makes a major point of the relationship between the people and the desert. And the story of the sand storm is right up there with any that I have ever read about hurricanes or tornadoes or any other such.