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Damascus is extremely old – Abel, the first murder victim, is buried there. As a centre for trade and a locus for the concentration of wealth and power, it has ever been a turbulent place, never more so than in the 1930s, when the short-lived Arab self-rule following the post-war collapse of the Ottoman empire had been superseded by a French 'mandate' (read 'colonization') imposed by the League of Nations. Nikolai Faroun is the chief of the Damascus Prefecture, the civil police force. At 40, he might be thought young for the job, but it's not a job many covet. Faroun is charged with keeping peace among the city's several sectors, inhabited by frequently clashing groups – Sunni, Shia, Druze, Jew and Christian. He must also cope with a separate French police force, the Surete, whose focus is political and whose chief detests him, as well as a military presence with its own turf and priorities, seldom in line with Faroun's. On this day, simply in order to investigate the reported finding of a body in the river, Faroun must make his way through a riot. When he arrives, he finds that the body is not that of some anonymous peasant, but a woman of an extremely prominent family, a woman with a great deal of scandal attached to her name, even before she turned up naked in a burlap sack with her throat slashed. Faroun begins his investigation, but almost before he can get started, the Surete arrest a French soldier right out from under his nose, and within hours the man has confessed. Faroun is left with a handful of clues, all pointing in different directions, and orders to drop the case, but of course he can't leave things alone. Highland does a good job of evoking a 1930s Damascus that is edgy, unstable and weary. His Faroun is also well-drawn, and the slow revealing of the policeman's background and how he happens to be here in this position is nicely done. I had some difficulty with Vera Tamiri, the murder victim. She is a complicated person and it takes some time to discover all the significant aspects that relate to her fate, but I never found her as interesting as she needs to be; it was hard to care much about her. Much more interesting was the progression of one of the bad guys from wimpy to scary, and there are several passages, such as Faroun's encounter with bandits who want his motorcycle, or his dealings with a very young mute artist, that keep one turning pages. In sum, a flawed book, but one worth reading.
Reviewed by Diana Sandberg, March 2007
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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