Customer Reviews

Samaritan's Secret (Omar Yussef Mystery 3)

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(20)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

If you enjoyed Matt Benyon Rees' first two Omar Yussef novels, you want to buy this one. It is another page turner, this time exploring the interplay between Hamas and Fatah in the West Bank town of Nablus as Omar Yussef is driven to solve the murder of the son of the religious leader of the small Samaritan tribe. If you want to learn about Palestine and its people, these novels are as good a place as any to start-- and you get some great detective stories too.

Omar Yussef mysteries give a reader much more than a crime and its solution. They put human faces on Palestinians living in a limbo between occupation and statehood, with their own law enforcement agencies working under the shadow (or, if you prefer, watchful eye) of the Israelis. The stories though are all about the Palestinians. There is not a word of dialog or even a name put to any Israeli, allowing the characters to show the diversity in Palestinians' opinions, outlook and standards of living. Rees is a former Middle East reporter with great powers of observation, and his novels, through the words and descriptions of the characters, give their readers a better education about the problems of Palestine than a month of 90 second reports on cable news about the day to day events there. No one will be offended by anything in these books, and everyone will be informed.

I have heard that Rees' books are to be translated into Hebrew. I hope they are on sale in Israel soon, and that they will also be available in Arabic. These books deserve far more attention than they have received.

The chronicle of Omar Yussef Sirhan, Palestinian school master cum detective, continues with the well-written "The Samaritan's Secret." Author Matthew Beynon Rees, a British journalist with long experience in the Middle East, has a deep and almost uncanny understanding of Palestine, its people and culture, all of which are well-reflected in this crime novel and the two others in the Omar Yussef series. To his great credit, the evocative descriptions of the West Bank (and Gaza previously) and its people are both "warts and all" and admiring.

"The Samaritan's Secret" takes Omar Yussef and his family to the northern West Bank town of Nablus for the wedding of a young policeman friend and his fiance, Meimoun (introduced in "A Grave in Gaza"). The couple's marriage ceremony coincides with an outbreak of hostilities between Hamas and Fatah militants which provides the dangerous backdrop for the murder mystery that is introduced early in the story.

While Omar Yussef is visiting a shrine of the fast-dwindling Samaritan sect where the theft of sacred religious books has been reported, the body of badly beaten young man is found. The victim turns out to be the adopted son of the chief priest of the Samaritans--a man who is strangely ambivalent about his son's death and the theft of the religious articles.

The murdered man was also a close confidant of the late PLO Chief, Yasser Arafat, and apparently held the secret to the whereabouts of hundreds of millions of international assistance dollars stashed in overseas banks for Arafat's personal use. There is a general belief among the Nablus population that the young victim was also gay and may have had relationships with a number of important figures in the Palestinian state. All of this seems to contribute to a violent and extremely dangerous feeding frenzy that threatens Omar Yussef and his friends and family as he attempts to solve the murder of the young Samaritan.

In addition to a clever and every-changing plot line, author Beynon Rees has gone to great and very effective lengths to describe Omar Yussef's relationships with family and friends. While Omar Yussef represents honor and justice, he is also shown to be a middle-aged man with a lot of physical problems, some the result of an alcoholic and violent past. He and his long-time friend, Bethlehem police chief, Khamis Zeydan, are a sad/funny team of grumpy old men, who persist against the formidable odds to solve what becomes a series of murders, before returning to the scene of the original crime for the final denouement.

This is terrific read with lots of twists and turns and surprises up to the final page. Beynon Rees deserves great credit for presenting his story with authentic sounding, no sugar-coated descriptions of the time, place and people that are the West Bank today.

Think Chandler when you read this detective novel. One character in the book even prompts us at intervals by telling us that Chandler is who she is reading. This kind of detective story is nothing like Agatha Christie, and not really much more like certain modern practitioners of the genre, say Ian Rankin. Indeed the main focus is not even on the detection element at all. As in the seven Philip Marlowe novels, it is the characters themselves and the background against which they are drawn that are the things that matter more.

There is one respect at least in which you might even think that The Samaritan's Secret compares well with Chandler, and that respect is the clarity of the plot. Chandler did not want his novels to be read or assessed as mere whodunits, and he admitted candidly that he was well into his stories before he even made up his mind who the killer would turn out to be. Myself, I adore Chandler. When I was young I knew the seven novels nearly by heart, and to this day I can't follow the plot of any of them. No such problem with The Samaritan's Secret. The range of possibilities is very restricted (although there are some genuine surprises), and the truth emerges at least as much through candour and loquacity on several people's part as through any `detecting' that Omar Yussef does.

Is it all a bit oversimplified and schematic? I guess it probably is, although I greatly enjoyed it. Matt Rees has long experience as a journalist covering the Middle East, and so can be expected to have more insight into the cultures and ways of thinking in that tortured region than most of us have. The characters are rather two-dimensional, but that may actually be a good thing in a novel of only 300 or so pages. What is important is that they should be distinctive, and I give Rees good marks for that. The principal character is, obviously, Omar Yussef himself, whom I have seen compared to Morse and Rebus. I think we need more time and more books before we can really judge whether that comparison holds. The comparison that the author implicitly invites is between his `hero' and Marlowe, and what they share in common, for all their obvious dissimilarities, is stubbornness and mental honesty.

The streets that Omar Yussef goes down are even meaner than those in Marlowe's Los Angeles. The participants' daily diet of deception, vengeance, violence and death is depicted with a light touch, and I suppose it has to be that way, otherwise it would overwhelm and submerge the detective-story element. However when a British writer presumes to get inside the heads of the inhabitants of such a region it is more or less impossible to purge the narrative of a certain patronising condescension, however unintended that may be. I would expect this story to find many appreciative and admiring readers all the same, and I shall be interested to see how much mileage this new hero and his ambience turn out to have in them.

Omar Yussef is at it again, against all advice from the police force he insists on getting to the bottom of a murder in the Samaritain community in Nablus. This story takes place in Palestine where Omar and his family are attending the wedding of their family friend. Omar accompanies his friend Sammi to the site of a gruesome murder and is haunted by the eyes of the victim. Through a series of investigations he picks up clues and the reader is given many descriptions of life in Palenstine and what that entails. This isn't for everyone as the description can bog the plot down but I enjoyed it and it's one of the reasons I read these stories. Matt Benyon Rees has been able to humanize the people that live in this Middle Eastern area, they are no longer victims and attackers that live somewhere far away they are just men, women, husbands, sons and daughters trying to make a life and solve a mystery. Well done addition to the series!

The third book in the Omar Yussef mysteries and the best one so far. Author Matt Beynon Rees certainly knows background material - I cannot remember how many times while reading this book that I felt I was right there, with Omar, hurrying through narrow little alleyways or crouching behind broken walls. Superbly written - the tone and the pacing are perfect (I finished this in one day - it was near impossible to put down).

This book sees Omar Yussef inadvertently caught up in the power struggles between different Palestinian factions. The small Samaritan community (only about 600 people) is the scene of a brutal torture and murder (Omar does not witness the torture or murder so, thankfully, neither does the reader). When Omar's friend, a Palestinian detective, tries to investigate, he is beaten brutally for his efforts. Omar and his wife are also threatened. And these actions, Omar cannot countenance. And thus book is off to the races.

As I read the book, I found myself admiring Omar for his clear frustration that the Palestinian factions, rather than working together to better the Palestinians, are jostling for power and money. Other groups in the book - the U.N. and the World Bank - at first seem hopelessly naive, but as the book progresses, it becomes clear that while they do not understand the very complicated dynamics in Palestinian society, they are far from naive. And in this, I think that Rees has painted an accurate a picture of the tragedies and challenges of the contemporary Palestinian landscape.

There are multiple sets of tensions interwoven throughout the book - the theft of an ancient scroll, a murder mystery, and then the Palestinian power struggles - which keeps the pace intense and the reader on his/her toes. This is not a murder mystery in the typical police procedural vein or the Agatha Christie genre - this is more like a police procedural, political thriller, spy mystery, and Middle Eastern tragedy all wrapped into one. A perfect match for a reader interested in smart mysteries.

Get this book - you won't be disappointed.

I'm a great fan of Omar Yussif (Abu Ramiz) and the whole cast of characters that Beynon Rees brings to the page along with his gritty portrayal of life under the Palestinian Authority.

This time out the mystery involve the Samaritans, a small sect of about 600 people, half of whom live in the West Bank near Nablus and half who live near Holon in Israel. They are an offshoot of Judaism maintaining a highly similar Torah scroll (the book cites 7000 differences however the actual number is about 6000). The point of differentiation was the Babylonian exile (600 BC) and the return 60 years later. Apparently they were not carried off and did not accept the Babylonian Talmud. They do not identify themselves as part of modern Judaism but it is permitted for the men to marry Jewish women. They are a fascinating subject in their own right.

Beynon Rees' writing flows easily. Aside from Omar Yussif brushing the thin hairs of his bald head a few times too often the elements of the plot weave with a constant rhythm and I was unable to put it down from start to finish. The McGuffins are huge, the primary sacred scroll of the Samaritans, a billion dollars that was hidden by Yassir Arafat (always referred to as "The President" and not by name) that the World Bank is trying to recover along with proof that the late Chairman died of AIDS. The character of Amin Kanaan seems to be loosely based on Palestinian billionaire Munib Al Masri. The Casbah of Nablus too emerges as a character and one can almost smell the qanifa and humous emerging from the alleyways. And while I noticed the various clues along the way I found the final solutions to be a bit unexpected and quite satisfying. These are things I look for in a mystery.

I can hardly wait for the next book in the series, The Fourth Assassin: An Omar Yussef Mystery due in Feb. Perhaps it will center around the upcoming wedding of Omar Yussif's son, Zuheir.


Highly Recommended. Excels in plot, characterization and description.

Again MBR takes a fascinating historic, religious, and cultural nugget and spins it into an entertaining novel. The Samaritans are a living anachronism. There are 600 survivors in this insular community. They adhere to the torah as handed down through the generations since Moses. The Samaritans say they have the true book in the Abisha scroll; a priceless historical gem at the center of the mystery. Interestingly, Israel does not recognize the sect as jews and they reside on the West Bank.
Our anti-hero Omar Youssef is in Nabluss in the West Bank to help celebrate Sami's nuptials. Omar's hair is a little thinner and whiter and his hands shake a little more. He is paying for the alchoholic excesses of his youth. His mind, however, is still on the razor's edge. This mystery winds through the twisted ancient streets of the casbah. This is very cool to vicariously experience the serpentine alleys and steambaths of the souk without getting shot at. The Fatah and Hammas rivalry is deftly woven into the plot. The corruption of the priviledged few and the poverty of the masses is illustrated. The mystery centers around the actual stone where Abraham offered up his only son Isaac for sacrifice.
Our protagonist Omar Youssef is the only one capable of unravelling the mystery of a murder and the missing 300 million dollars from Yassar Arraffatt. As usual he delivers the answers tied up in a neat bundle; just in time to kiss his favorite granddaughter Nadia.

As I read The Samaritan's Secret it just got better and better. I loved Rees's first two Omar Yussef books but I really think this is in a different league. The plotting is perfect: at one point I was turning back to see what one of the main characters had said earlier in the book, looking for traces of guilt in his dialogue. This is exactly what I think the author of any crime novel wants the reader to be doing, trying to work it out for themselves, but then being surprised by the ending. There were last-minute twists that took me by surprise - hugely satisfying touches. I also liked that the mystery was spun out within the framework of actually very few main characters, and yet I was kept guessing. I love it when a crime novel has only a limited cast because you really get a sense of each character and yet you're still confounded as to what's really going on. And finally, the sense of place was great, even better than in Rees's earlier books set in Bethlehem and Gaza. Long live Omar!

Third in a series of three, this book is just as entertaining as the previous two. Omar Yussef, a mid age school teacher and part time detective, takes the reader through some exciting and interesting crimes which he solves along with his police chief friend Khamas Zeydan and lieutenant Sami. The stories take place in the Gaza strip and provide authentic background to this world focal point. Author, Matt Beynon Rees, as an ex Time magazine bureau chief for the area, is well informed by actual on scene experience. The reader can gain a valuable insights into the culture of the area. Matt is a master in his craft. More of "detective" Omar's adventures are hoped for.

#3 Omar Yussef Sirhan mystery set in Palestine, this one in the city of Nablus where Omar and his family have come for his friend Sami's wedding. Before that happens though, Sami, a police officer, gets tangled up in an investigation regarding a murdered Samaritan--a small religious sect related to Judaism with a temple on Mt. Gerishim above the city.

When Sami is warned off the investigation by one of the powerful political sects, Omar takes up the slack and investigates with his friend Khamis Zeydan, Bethlehem's police chief (also in town for the wedding) and discover that Khamis has a personal tie to the investigation. Was the young man's death related to the recent theft of an ancient, sacred scroll or was it motivated by something personal or political. In Palenstine, it seems that politics figure heavily in every investigation and the police are often in the pay of various political sects who then direct how the investigation should go. Omar Yussef is outraged by this and wants to get at the truth--which often (and in this case also) leads to him putting himself in harm's way. Eventually they do get to the heart of the matter, with an interesting plot twist that I should have seen coming (one of those head-slapping moments, because the clues were there!) but didn't.

Another stellar entry in this series, the author puts you right in the heart of the city of Nablus and without letting on that he's doing so, gives you an interesting education into the city's history, the mingling of various religions and political parties, and the current state of affairs. I always walk away from these books feeling saddened at the way things are in the Middle East, how people must be torn in many directions in their daily lives, to live with things hanging over their heads that we in the Western world can only begin to imagine. I like Omar Yussef a lot--he's an engaging, believable character with a striped past and his own flaws but with an inherent integrity that nevertheless leaves him open to temptation at times. Very much looking forward to the next in this wonderful series.