City of Veils by Zoe Ferraris

This is part 2 of Ferraris’ police procedural trilogy set in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia that also continues the developing relationship between desert guide Nayir ash-Sharqi and coroner tech Katya Hijazi, who met up in part 1, Finding Nouf.

A girl has washed up on a Red Sea beach near Jeddah. It’s hard to tell how long she had been in the water. The fish had worked over her face pretty severely. He hands have been burned, almost like someone wanted to make sure she couldn’t be identified. She was still in her cloak, but the cloak was pulled up around her neck, her jeans were clumped around her ankles, and she had numerous cuts on her leg, sliced repeatedly using a very sharp knife.

Seeing as how the victim was a woman, the coroner calls in a female former tech, Katya, now working in the Jeddah version of the CSI unit.They can’t ID the woman, so they call in a forensic anthropologist to craft a drawing, but Katya goes digging through the missing person’s reports and thinks she has an idea – an independent filmmaker and freelance videographer for local television stations named Leila.

Miriam Walker is wife to one of those ubiquitous security guards from the US, here for the money, but also falling in love with the Saudi lifestyle. To assimilate, they live away from the American compounds in a rental apartment where Miriam is expected to adopt Saudi religious customs about the role and behavior of women; she ain’t happy. She’s been back in the US for a month and her flight back kinda sucks because of her seatmate. After hubby Eric picks her up at the airport, they drive to their apartment where Eric just vanishes when he goes to buy some carry out.

Leila shoots boring background shots for the news shows and lives with her brother's family after her divorce from an arranged marriage that lasted maybe a month or so. Osama Ibrahim is in charge of the investigation and, after his female colleague gets fired for lying about being married, draws Katya into the investigation because a woman is needed to dig into a woman’s past – it’s just not right for a man to be in the company of a woman who is not a sister or mother or wife much less ask sensitive questions about a woman. Even though he is a cop, he has to work within religious restrictions of decency. 

The police question Leila’s family. Her brother is very strict and doesn’t like Leila going out on her own with no escort, just her video camera. They fight often. Leila’s also been filming a art collection for some richer than rich guy from Riyadh. After a few blind alleys, Osama and Katya get an address for this rich guy and when they knock on the apartment door, Miriam answers.

No detective believes in coincidences, especially in Jeddah. So the investigations of Leila’s murder and Eric’s disappearance become intermingled as Ferraris deftly takes us on a circuitous route through Jeddah, the nearby desert, Islamic scholars and rumors of long-lost translations of the Qur'an, and the hidden underbelly that makes Jeddah look far more like Las Vegas than it does as the gateway for pilgrims on their hajj headed for Mecca. This oppression of women and scholarly debates about the Qur'an are the subjects Leila is preparing for her documentary so you can imagine someone, make that many, will have issues with what she is planning. 

I read these 3 books a bit out of order. When read in order, the reader is gently introduced to Nayir and Katya, but the main gist of each book is the crime(s) under investigation. But when viewed in order, the gentle interplay of Nayir’s devotion to Islam and the proper behavior of an unmarried man with an unmarried woman vs. Katya’s interest in becoming a full fledged investigator for the police seem to be at odds with each other, but over the 3 books, they work out some semblance of an alliance and a gentle connection. So, depending of the view of the reader, this trilogy could be seen police procedurals ahead of their developing relationship or as a growing love story between two people with divergent views of traditional Saudi life that just happens to blossom around some particularly gruesome crimes. When I first started the series, I saw it as the former, but having finished, I’m not so sure.

Guess that means that Ferraris is a pretty darn good story teller, able to present police investigations (that violate some of the protections we here in the US take for granted) and a compelling love story, capable of entertaining lovers of blood/guts cop tales as well as those who would prefer to curl up with a relationship tale, Saudi style. If you think you'd like to take a chance on this series, I'd suggest reading them in order: Finding Nouf, City of Veils, Kingdom of Strangers. 

ECD