Customer Reviews

The Bethlehem Murders Export

5 star:		(0)
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3 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

that grows on you as you keep reading.

If I had stopped at, say, half the book and thown it away, I would have rated it with one star: at the beginning it's almost simple-minded. But luckily I was dogged, and the reading got better and better.

I won't retell the plot that's summarized in the "Product description" of the Editorial Revs of this page because, frankly, there isn't much more to tell. You have to read it to enjoy its atmosphere. You'll find some genuine glimpses of undistorted Arab culture told in a disarming, almost cozy way. You'll find, to your surprise, that even such an ineffective fellow as Omar Yussef can trap criminals. You'll discover that the story development, that seems so straightforward (and that, alas, is marred by some improbable coincidences and some hardly believable actions), rewards you with a final twist.

And, most important of all, you'll become aware of how life can somehow go on, and not just grimly, but with all its common joys and sorrows, under three opressions: the Israeli "occupiers", the Palestinian "martyrs", and the Muslim majority discrimination against the minority Christians. I can't vouch for the veracitiy of Rees' descriptions, but this book made me rethink my whole position on the Israeli-Palestinian question. Perhaps Rees wouldn't (couldn't?) write that way for a newspaper, but I now realize the extent of the crap -from both sides- we may be fed with each morning.

If "atmospherically true", this is an enlightening -the more so because unexpectedly-, although not a memorable crime, book. For atmo then, four stars; and two as a whodunit. Let's compromise, but buy it.

The Bethlehem Murders and The collaborator of Bethlehem are the same book! Different covers and titles but they are the same. Extremely upset when I started to read The Bethlehem Murders and I could have sworn I've read this book. There is absolutely no mention in Amazon that these books are the same.