I have a new review up at Eclectica Magazine of three international mysteries: The Wandering Ghost by Martin Limon, Murder on the Rue de Paradis by Cara Black and A Grave in Gaza by Matt Beynon Rees. All of them are excellent (if you are an Aimee Leduc fan you will really enjoy this latest entry in that series) but A Grave in Gaza is spectacular. The sequel to the equally impressive Collaborator of Bethlehem (which I reviewed at Bookslut last year), Gaza is a peek into the insanity of daily life in the Gaza Strip and the multiple political relationships that exist there. Here's a quote that I think explained just how complicated the political situation is there:

"Military Intelligence, Preventative Security, the Saladin Brigades of Gaza City and their rivals in the Saladin Brigades of Rafah. It's as though I have to find room in my head for every square kilometer of Gaza and space for every soldier in all these different groups to keep track of them."

For whatever reason, Westerners in general and Americans in particular like to simplify any and every political situation. We want good guys and bad guys and we would prefer if they dressed differently or spoke different languages or - hopefully - came from completely different places, so it would be easier to keep them sorted out. (You can see maybe just why we still have issues with our own Civil War.) We do this everyday in Iraq, we do it all over the place in Africa and we do it big time when trying to understand the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. When Hamas was elected we were thrown into a tailspin - they are the "bad" Palestinians so if they are leading the Palestinians then how does anyone talk to the Palestinians about ending the hostilities?

Enter Jimmy Carter - but that's a whole other story.

Rees has the background in the region and more than that, he has the ability to distill all the complicated issues and goals into very tightly written mysteries that are both prescient in terms of current events but also quite intimate as fits a story about one man and the crimes he solves in the Palestinian world. I don't usually say that you can read a novel in order to get a better understanding of international politics but in this case, Rees does such an outstanding job of explaining such an overwhelming issue that I can't recommend it enough. If you like political mysteries, you will enjoy this series anyway, but if you want to have any kind of a clue as to what is going on in this section of the Middle East then the Omar Yussef series is a great place to start. I can't recommend these books enough - the mysteries themselves are tightly woven through the plot and the larger stories are devastating in the picture they project of one of the most troubled places in the world. I finish them and wonder what I can do to make the world a better place - what any of us can do.

And then I remember - we just need to go vote.

A bit more from my review of A Grave in Gaza:

What he learns is that to understand the many motivations of the groups that operate in Gaza is impossible. "Trust none of them," says his friend Khamis Zeydan. "Think only of the man who sits in front of you at any given time. Forget his name and his organization. Just remember that at that moment he's first in line to eat you alive."

It's harsh advice but useful and as Yussef's co-workers are threatened, kidnapped and killed, he finds himself sitting down more than once with men he does not trust in an effort to get to the truth. His original case, to help the UN teacher, splinters off into a search for a missing missile, the loss of two friends and the vandalizing of a grave in the WWI British cemetery. There is a violent gun battle right outside his hotel, a horrifying visit to the local morgue and the discovery that in the rush for martyrdom, so closely tied to guns and power, families are quickly ripped apart. Getting to the bottom of the conflicting stories and power struggles reveals more about how little everyone knows about Gaza, especially westerners, than anything else. "...there's always someone fighting for this stretch of land," Yussef tells his friend James. "Usually with no real knowledge of it or claim to it. The Jews were here millennia ago and the Arabs have been here more than a thousand years, but everyone else who fought for this place was a stranger drawn by greed or hatred or God."