Crime Fiction Alphabet 2013: K is for KINGDOM OF STRANGERS, Zoe Ferraris

Following a pattern established in 2012, my contributions to the Crime Fiction Alphabet in 2013 will feature authors or books that I have read recently.

My choice this week is KINGDOM OF STRANGERS by Zoe Ferraris

Synopsis (Amazon)

A secret grave is unearthed in the desert revealing the bodies of 19 women and the shocking truth that a serial killer has been operating undetected in Jeddah for more than a decade.

However, lead inspector Ibrahim Zahrani is distracted by a mystery closer to home. His mistress has suddenly disappeared, but he cannot report her missing since adultery is punishable by death. With nowhere to turn, Ibrahim brings the case to Katya, one of the few women in the police department. Drawn into both investigations, she must be increasingly careful to hide a secret of her own.

Portraying the lives of women in one of the most closed cultures in the world, award-winning author Zoë Ferraris weaves a tale of psychological suspense around an elusive serial killer and the sinister forces trafficking in human lives in Saudi Arabia..

See my review

This is the third in this series that I have read, and I think they all have been winners.

See what others have chosen for the letter K.
 

Review: KINGDOM OF STRANGERS, Zoe Ferraris

• Published: Little, Brown UK 2012
• ISBN 978-1-4087-0365-6
• 313 pages
• source: my local library

Synopsis (Amazon)

A secret grave is unearthed in the desert revealing the bodies of 19 women and the shocking truth that a serial killer has been operating undetected in Jeddah for more than a decade.

However, lead inspector Ibrahim Zahrani is distracted by a mystery closer to home. His mistress has suddenly disappeared, but he cannot report her missing since adultery is punishable by death. With nowhere to turn, Ibrahim brings the case to Katya, one of the few women in the police department. Drawn into both investigations, she must be increasingly careful to hide a secret of her own.

Portraying the lives of women in one of the most closed cultures in the world, award-winning author Zoë Ferraris weaves a tale of psychological suspense around an elusive serial killer and the sinister forces trafficking in human lives in Saudi Arabia..

My Take

According to the police in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia has never had a serial killer, but now it appears that at least one has been operating for over ten years. For the police hierarchy it is a matter of shame that such activity has gone undetected, but the clue to that is in who the victims are. It helps explain why no connections have been made. But then the murderer makes a mistake and a disappearance is reported within hours of it happening.

The situation of women in Saudia Arabia is one with which Zoe Ferraris is very familiar but it will shock most Western readers. Katya Hijazi is a scene of crime technician, although she has ambition to to become a police detective, and the restrictions on her because she is a woman are an enormous barrier that she fights constantly. She is about to marry and her husband-to-be is both horrified and in awe of the work she takes on. It doesn't stop him being complicit in her activity.

There are two main stories: the one of the 19 bodies, and the other is the disappearance of a woman who has been working for the police undercover and has become involved with Inspector Ibrahim Zahrani. Katya attempts to help Zahrani find out what has happened to his mistress.

I was probably a little less shocked than some readers will be by the restrictions imposed on women in the name of religious purity in Saudi Arabia, mainly because I have experienced some at first hand when visiting Abu Dhabi. Saudi Arabia is a much more restrictive place than the United Arab Emirates, but even so in Abu Dhabi you get a glimpse of what might be.

Zoe Ferraris translates the reader very successfully into a very non-Western culture. If you can, read this series in order. There is a lot to take in and you'll get much more out of the sequential story of Katya Hijazi and Nayir Sharqi.

• Read an excerpt from KINGDOM OF STRANGERS.
• Zoe Ferraris' website

My rating: 4.7

I've already reviewed:
4.8, THE NIGHT OF THE MI'RAJ (aka FINDING NOUF)
4.8, CITY OF VEILS 

Review: CITY OF VEILS, Zoe Ferraris

• Format: Kindle Edition
• File Size: 618 KB
• Print Length: 384 pages
• Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group (June 3, 2010)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services
• Language: English

Source: I bought this and read it on my Kindle.
Read the opening chapter at Amazon.

A fisherman reports finding a dead body on the beach near Jeddah: female, young, but with whole sections of her face missing.
Nayir the desert guide is preparing to take another too wealthy family on a desert excursion, but the family keeps shortening the length of the planned trip, until eventually business gets in the way and they don't go at all.
It is 8 months since he has spoken to Katya, despite all the promise of the final days of their first investigation (FINDING NOUF/THE NIGHT OF THE MI'RAJ) At first Katya had phoned Nayir every week or so, but eventually stopped as it became obvious that he was unable to respond.

Katya has begun a new job. Thanks to a government initiative to get more Saudi women into the workplace, a number of positions had opened at the crime lab in police headquarters and Katya had won one of those jobs. The dead body on the beach is assigned to her boss Osama.

Miriam is an American woman rejoining her husband Eric in Jeddah. Eric has a military background and is working as a security guard. He speaks Arabic and has great respect for Muslim culture and wants to be part of it.
Miriam has been on holiday in the US for four weeks, and expects Eric to collect her at the airport. When he fails to turn up she is bundled into a room for unclaimed women. When Eric eventually arrives he seems distracted and has no good explanation for his lateness. Miriam and Eric live in an Islamic neighbourhood, something which upsets Miriam as she feels threatened and out of place. In the month she has been away Eric has done no cleaning and he has bought no food, so he leaves Miriam in their flat while he goes out to buy local food. Miriam thinks she hears him return and when she goes to the kitchen the food is there but Eric isn't. Her worst fears are realised when it becomes apparent  that Eric has disappeared.

CITY OF VEILS skilfully draws these story strands together, blending a murder investigation with a commentary on Saudi culture and in particular the status of women. We feel this commentary in the precariousness of Miriam trying to find out what has happened to Eric, in Katya and Osama trying to discover the identity of the body on the beach and what led to her murder, in Osama's relationship with his wife Nuah, and also in Nayir and Katya exploring their feelings for each other.

In much the same way as in THE NIGHT OF THE MI'RAJ you suspect that Zoe Ferraris didn't actually set out to write a murder mystery, but it certainly becomes the vehicle for the exploration of relationships in an Islamic society. For me it was a pointer to how little I really understand about Islam. In some ways Zoe Ferraris seems to be pointing to the social shortcomings of Saudi society, but on the other hand you are aware that she is treating the culture with great respect. The story raises so many issues for you to think about.

CITY OF VEILS is really another of these novels that crosses out of the crime fiction genre and really deserves a literary "tag" too.

My rating: 4.8

Other reviews to check:

• Caribou's Mom
• International Noir
• BermudaOnion

I wrote earlier in my blog about how I started CITY OF VEILS and then realised I needed to read the first book in the series FINDING NOUF/THE NIGHT OF THE MI'RAJ
I urge you to read my earlier post and to consider reading them in order.

Review: THE NIGHT OF THE MI'RAJ, Zoe Ferraris

Large print edition published in 2008 by W F Howes Lt.
ISBN 978-1-40741-480-5
455 pages
setting: Saudi Arabia, Jeddah
aka: FINDING NOUF (publ.2009)

From Publishers Weekly

A finely detailed literary mystery set in contemporary Saudi Arabia, Ferraris's debut centers on Nouf ash-Shrawi, a 16-year-old girl who disappeared into the desert three days before her marriage and has been found dead, several weeks pregnant. Palestinian Nayir al-Sharqi who lives in Jeddah and works occasionally for the rich Shrawi family, is asked by them to investigate Nouf's death discreetly.
Nayir, a conservative Muslim and an outsider because of his nationality, his class and his large stature, is wary of traversing the wide gulf between Saudi men's and women's worlds, and is encouraged by his friend Othman, an adopted son of the Shrawis, to seek out the help of Katya Hijazi, Othman's fiancée.
Katya has a Ph.D. and is employed in the women's section of the state medical examiner's office. As Nayir and Katya's investigation progresses, it becomes clear that at least one of the Shrawis has something to hide. Ferraris, who has lived in Saudi Arabia, gets deep inside Nayir's and Katya's very different perspectives, giving a fascinating glimpse into the workings and assumptions of Saudi society.

Author's note:
The title of this novel is taken from an important event narrated in the Quran and the Hadith, the oral traditions relating to the words and deeds of the Prophet Mohammed.  A celebrated occasion in Islam, the mi'raj is the second half of the miraculous night-time journey during which Mohammed ascends on his winged horse al-Buraq to the heavens and there in Paradise is presented before Allah.

The mi'raj is both a physical journey and a spiritual climax - a moment of revelation for Mohammed. In this book Nayir's journey to learning the truth behind Nouf's death is, for him, a physical and spiritual discovery too. With this in mind, I have given Nayir's story the title of The Night of the Mi'raj.

My comments

It is not often that crime fiction readers get the chance to get right inside the skin of another society, but this is what I feel Zoe Ferraris does for us in THE NIGHT OF THE MI'RAJ.
My guess is that I already have some understanding from practical experience of how Islamic society works, but the novel showed me much greater depth.
The characters of Nayir and Katya are so well drawn. Nayir is a Palestinian often mistaken for a Bedouin. He has been employed by the family in the past as a desert guide, and this time to find out the truth about Nouf's disappearance. So he is not a policeman, not even a detective. Katya on the other hand is well qualified in forensic medicine but is a woman, trying to be "modern" in an Islamic world. The picture of each of them trying to bide by convention, Nayir because he wants to, Katya because she must, is carefully drawn.

I've included the author's note about the novel's title because in this case I think I actually concur with its renaming to FINDING NOUF. The title THE NIGHT OF THE MI'RAJ really has little meaning for the non-Islamic reader unless you are prepared to do some research, although it would obviously be charged with significance for the Islamic one. So I think the Islamic reader would explore the meaning of that title in a way that I never would.
On the other side of the coin though I have noted what the publisher says about this being a literary novel and coupled that with what the author says about Nayir's journey. I think I understand that Ferraris didn't see herself as primarily writing crime fiction. The investigation into the death of Nouf is really just a back drop to Nayir and Katya showing what it is like to be Islamic in the modern world.  From that point of view alone the novel, whatever its title, is fascinating.

My rating 4.8

I read this for the 2010 Global Reading Reading Challenge.
As I commented in a post a couple of days ago, I actually first began reading the next in the series, CITY OF VEILS, and then decided that I was missing far too much back story. So I certainly advise reading these novels in order. I'll be going on to my reading of  CITY OF VEILS shortly.