Omar Yussef "the best crime fiction can achieve"

[Matt Rees]

The first rock concert I ever attended was a performance by Canada's greatest rockers Rush. I've loved Canadians ever since. In the London (Ontario) Free Press recently, Joan Barfoot gave me another reason to adore them. She gives a terrific review to the second of my Palestinian crime novels A GRAVE IN GAZA (UK title The Saladin Murders). Of my sleuth, she writes: "Omar Yussef is a brilliant creation--an outraged, modest, wry and dogged involuntary detective who is a clear, friendly and bitterly amusing comrade through the maze of horrors that a trapped populace endures. A Grave in Gaza, as well as Rees's previous Omar Yussef novel The Collaborator of Bethlehem, demonstrates the best qualities crime fiction can achieve -- gripping plots featuring a sympathetic protagonist about vital subjects."