City of Veils

Starred review from June 14, 2010
Ferraris's stellar second novel is again set in Saudi Arabia and features the desert guide Nayir Sharqi and forensic scientist Katya Hijazi, introduced in Finding Nouf. Nayir and Hijazi gingerly probe the death of an unconventional young woman found mutilated and half-nude on a beach near Jeddah, as well as the disappearance of an American security contractor, who, to the dismay of his American wife, had a "summer marriage" with the victim. Nayir, a sensitive but orthodox Muslim, inches toward realizing that when a woman is cloistered, a man's duties to her multiply a dozenfold, while independent-minded Katya, whom he loves, pretends to be married in order to work as a technician in Jeddah's homicide force. Katya's boss, Det. Insp. Osama Ibrahim, also loses his progressive self-image after he discovers his wife wants a career more than she wants his children. The author, who lived for a time in Saudi Arabia in the 1990s with her then husband, presents a searing portrait of the religious and cultural veils that separate Muslim women from the modern world.

This highly original police procedural set in contemporary Saudi Arabia fascinates as a whodunit as well as an inside look at a closed society. (Try being a veiled and cloistered female murder investigator in Jeddah.) Unfortunately, Kate Reading only gets her wake-up call very late in the story. The rest of the time she reads in a dozy, repetitive rhythm that has nothing to do with the excitement on the page, ending sentence after sentence with a trailing off, as if she's encountered an ellipse instead of a period--let alone a fright, a snarl of anger, or an exclamation! Combine that with at least three egregious editing foul-ups, and it must be said the publishers have done this engaging book no favors. B.G. (c) AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine