I kind of goofed up by picking up this work thinking that it is an earlier installment of the Omar Youssef series than another book I own, but this is the third item in the series not the first.

The setting is what makes these detective stories interesting. Omar Youssef is not the typical policeman he is a Palestinian school-teacher who finds himself embroiled in a murder mystery. This time he is traveling to Nablus with his family to attend a wedding of a police officer colleague when a tragedy strikes and a body is discovered in the vicinity of Samaritan temple. The victim is Ishaq, the son of the temple custodian, who was also the financial adviser of a senior political figure in the Palestinian hierarchy.

True to old-style detective novels Omar Youssef unravels the layers of the mystery surrounding the murder, giving us in the meantime a snapshot of life in the West Bank, the Palestinian realities of corruption, extremism and survival. It also gives some insight into the small Samaritan community resident near Nablus.
I found this a very quick and interesting read, a good old-fashioned mystery with clear-cut motives and none of the high-tech investigation style, which I suppose is something to be expected considering the setting of the West Bank. ( )

I wanted to like this. But I never connected with it.

Omar Yussef is a Palestinian teacher who travels to Nablus for the wedding of a friend, Sami. While there, he is drawn into the investigation of the murder of a Samaritan. The Samaritan community lies on the outside of town, up a hill. The murdered man is the son of the group leader.

Omar Yussef wants very much to find the culprit, but soon discovers that the police are less interested. In part it is this lack of interest that fuels his continuing investigation - on his own, primarily.

We get into the lives of the Samaritans, how they were established, and how life is in Nablus, with bombs every day. It's a tribute to seeing beyond the categories as well as a mystery. Yet for some reason I had difficulty attaching to anyone in it or to what they were about. ( )

Omar Yussef travels to Nablus for a wedding and ends up trying to navigate Palestinian and international politics when a young man from a Samaritan community is found murdered. Although I wasn't as enamored with this installment as I was with the first two, I did, as always, enjoy Rees' insight into the Palestinian community and the fact that he lets them be the actors in their own drama (rather than involving any Israeli characters). His descriptions of the landscape, the city life, the people, the foods, and the smells are all highly evocative and makes me want to book a flight right now and go straight to the souk for a slice of kanafi. The story in this installment is what doesn't quite work for me - Omar Yussef's character is almost James Bond-like and, although I know the West Bank is not the most peaceful place in the world, I doubt it'd be possible to just walk around and kill people in the casbah without anyone batting an eye. Definitely still worth the read, for the locale and the insight into politics, but I do hope Rees lets Omar Yussef be more himself in the next installment. ( )

Als Omar Jussuf und seine Familie zur Hochzeitsfeier eines Freundes, des Polizisten Sami Jaffari, nach Nablus kommen, beginnt der Ärger. Eine wertvolle alte Schriftrolle der Samaritaner, einer uralten religiösen Minderheit in Nablus, ist gestohlen worden. Sami beteiligt Omar Jussuf an den Nachforschungen, denn er weiß, dass sich der Geschichtslehrer für die Hintergründe interessiert. Die Schriftrolle taucht plötzlich wieder auf, kurze Zeit später findet man allerdings die Leiche eines jungen Mannes auf dem Berg, auf dem einst der Tempel der Samaritaner gestanden haben soll. Der Tote hatte für Jassir Arafat gearbeitet und das Budget des früheren palästinensischen Präsidenten verwaltet. Nun sucht nicht nur die Weltbank nach verschwundenen 300 Millionen Dollar. Die Polizei will aus Angst nicht ernsthaft ermitteln, aber Omar Jussuf weiß, dass alle Hilfsgelder an Palästina eingefroren werden, wenn das verschwundene Geld nicht wieder auftaucht. Und er hat nur ein paar Tage Zeit.

Spannend und atmosphärisch dicht, voller faszinierender Einblicke und mit einem wunderbaren Gespür für das Detail erzählt Matt Beynon Rees in seinem neuen Omar Jussuf-Krimi von der unheilvollen Verquickung persönlicher Schicksale und explosiver Machtkämpfe

Quelle: Amazon.de ( )

The third installment of Matt Beynon Rees’ series featuring Omar Yussef, a teacher and administrator for the UN schools in Palestine, is THE SAMARITAN’S SECRET. Omar Yussef and his family have traveled to Nablus to attend the wedding of Sami, a family friend and a police officer. The trip is concerning for more than the usual reasons that weddings are fraught with angst and anxiety. Nablus is on the West Bank and tensions have become hostilities between Hamas and Fatah.
The Samaritans are related to the Jews but are not actually a part of that group. The New Testament story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman demonstrates how far back the division goes. The Samaritan community in Nablus is one of about 600 people, devoted to preserving their differences from the larger Jewish community.
When a Torah scroll is stolen from the synagogue of the Samaritans, Sami is asked to investigate the theft. He invites Omar Yussef to accompany him to meet the leader of the synagogue. While there, Sami learns that the body of a young man has been found on a hill sacred to the Samaritans. The victim has been brutally beaten and it is soon learned that he was an aide to the recently deceased, unnamed leader of Fatah. The victim was the only one who knew the location of all of the leader’s money that had been secreted around the world. He is also the son of the chief rabbi from whom the scroll was stolen . Before anything of value is learned, Sami is badly beaten, his arm broken. Someone is desperate to keep Sami from identifying any suspects.
The circumstances allow Omar Yussef to begin his own investigation, slowly, methodically gathering pieces of information. The suspect pool deepens when Omar Yussef learns that the young man may have been homosexual. He has enemies because of his sexuality and because the leader of Fatah has trusted him with the deepest secrets of the group.
Since the locations of the money were a secret known only to the leader and the murdered man, the situation becomes even more complicated when the World Bank demands the return of the money. They claim that the money was donated from international groups who gave it for the benefit of the Palestinian community. Unless the money is returned to them, Palestine will receive no further aid.
Omar Yussef is a teacher in the UN school, making him the only representative of that body in the area. So the direction of the investigation and the guarantee of its impartiality fall to him. The slow moving man who thinks things through very deliberately is now the last man standing who can solve the Samaritan’s secret and identify his killer.
Rees weaves into the story the riots and killings that are a constant in the Palestinian territories. He also addresses the difficulties that arise for young people who have lived in the west and found acceptance there, an acceptance that doesn’t exist in a rigid Muslim society. Rees has lived and worked in Palestine and Israel and each book sheds light on the problems faced by ordinary people trying to live their lives in a place where political realities allow no one to be safe. ( )