Finding Nouf by Zoe Ferraris

Some months ago I read the second book in this series. At the time, I ordered this book on paper since it wasn't available for kindle. It has been on my "to read soon" shelf ever since - but I don't often read on paper these days. Then it popped up on my kindle! My sister had finally gotten around to reading the second book, City of Veils, and when she went looking for book one - it had been released for kindle. Not the first time this has happened.

Whatever. I am pleased to note that if I had read this one first I would have gone looking for the second. This one begins with the disappearance of a young woman rather than the discovery of a body, but again the motives are bound up in Saudi religious law and moral codes. And, as in her second book, Americans are involved, although not as deeply in this one.

In spite of the title note - Katya Kijazi - the focal character is definitely Nayir. Although Katya provides information and access, the insights into the crime come primarily from Nayir. We are also privy to his struggles be a good muslim in spite of the great temptations placed in his way.

I have to wonder if Ferraris's experiences in Saudi Arabia and with her Saudi husband and his family truly make her qualified to comment in such depth on Saudi culture. In the second book, we are given a view through the eyes and mind of an American woman, a woman whose situation was fundamentally different from Ferraris's own, but still an educated American, not a Saudi woman of any economic or educational level. I have often thought that one of our national errors is assuming that all people are fundamentally the same - even as I find it difficult to write that without making excuses for that statement. I suspect that the patterns of thinking in the Middle East are quite different from ours and the careless assumption that all of us have the same fundamental priorities is responsible for many problems.