A Grave in Gaza (Omar Yussef Series #2) by Matt Beynon Rees

From the Publisher

“In A Grave in Gaza, Omar Yussef and his boss,Magnus Wallender, travel to the Gaza Strip for a routine inspection of the UN schools in the Gaza refugee camps.Upon their arrival they meet James Cree, the UN security officer for Gaza, who informs them that a teacher at one of their schools has been accused of spying and imprisoned. As they try to free the teacher and keep a lid on an explosive political situation, they are pulled into a confrontation with Gaza’s warring government factions and the criminal gangs with which they are connected.Omar Yussef confronts the dark elements of Gaza—dirty politics, bribery, assassination, and kidnapping—in his struggle to free the innocent and honor the dead.

Publishers Weekly

palestinian history teacher Omar Yussef travels from the West Bank to the Gaza Strip, where he becomes immersed in local violence and politics, in this over-the-top sequel to Rees's The Collaborator of Bethlehem (2007). Omar Yussef is a modest figure, quiet and middle-aged. When a U.N. official asks him to speak to a kidnapped schoolteacher's wife, he soon finds himself in the midst of international intrigue, dealing missiles over dinner, shouting down police officers and militants armed with machine guns and rescuing someone from a smuggling tunnel. These incidents seem a bit extreme for an aging academic, though his charm and calm demeanor are almost enough to convince the reader. The zany plot is interesting despite its implausibility, and the richly detailed descriptions, complete with deliberately brutal details of torture and death, emphasize Omar Yussef's peril and the violent tumult of the Middle East. (Feb.)

David Keymer - Library Journal

In Rees's exceptionally fine follow-up to his highly praised debut, The Collaborator of Bethlehem, the Palestinian government in Gaza is a fiction: warring gangs collaborate only to loot. Omar Yussef, the principal of a girls' school in Bethlehem, arrives on an inspection tour of schools and is soon drawn into efforts to secure the release of a university lecturer arrested on a trumped-up charge of spying. One of his colleagues is kidnapped, a UN van is blown up, and a UN observer killed. At 56, Yussef is neither supersleuth nor superhero, just an honorable man striving to find justice for the disenfranchised in a thoroughly corrupt society, where violence is the preferred, indeed, the only tool of governing. A virtue of this outstanding novel is its prose: evocative and sensual in describing setting and character, forceful in moving along the action. A compelling mystery story and a sympathetic portrait of a wounded society, this novel is truly excellent popular fiction. Strongly recommended for mystery and general collections. [See Prepub Mystery, LJ10/1/07.]

School Library Journal

Adult/High School -Omar Yussef, principal of a United Nations girlsa' school in a refugee camp near Bethlehem, accompanies two UN officials on a routine school inspection in the Gaza Strip. Routine is quickly set aside, though, after a teacher at one of the institutions is arrested for accusing officials at the local university of corruption. Omar Yussef and his colleagues try to intervene on the teacher's behalf, only to be drawn deeper and deeper into both the open and the covert struggles for political power in Gaza City. When one inspector is kidnapped and the other killed, Omar Yussef is left alone to disentangle the schemes of various political and criminal factions in a last-ditch effort to save his colleague's life as well as his own. Gaza is less a mystery than a suspense novel. What mystery there is lies in determining the links between the various factions. Nonetheless, it is a fascinating view into a much-discussed but little-understood part of the world. Omar Yussef is a champion of the common people, those who try to live quiet and peaceful lives amid social and political chaos. Teens with an interest in the Middle East will find this a fascinating and sobering read.-Sandy Schmitz, Berkeley Public Library, CA

Kirkus Reviews

An inspection of UN schools in the Gaza refugee camps turns as deadly as the landscape itself. Omar Yussef Sirhan (The Collaborator of Bethlehem, 2007) couldn't be sorrier that he agreed to accompany the United Nations Relief and Works Agency's Magnus Wallender to Gaza. Unlike his peaceful home in Bethlehem, where his beloved wife Maryam fusses to prepare his meals, Gaza is a place of punishing dust storms and desperate poverty. It doesn't help that as soon as they arrive, they discover that Eyad Masharawi has been arrested after accusing Prof. Adnan Maki of Al-Azhar University, where Masharawi served as adjunct, of granting unearned degrees to members of Colonel al-Fara's Preventive Security forces. Soon after, Wallender is kidnapped by members of a shadowy militia called the Saladin Brigade who demand the release of Bassam Odwan, jailed for killing Fathi Salah of Military Intelligence, which is led by General Husseini, al-Fara's rival. Then James Cree, Gaza's UN security officer, is killed by a roadside bomb. But as Omar Yussef's childhood friend, expatriate Bethlehem police chief Khamis Zeydan, tells him, no crime in Gaza stands on its own. And when UN negotiators decide that Gaza is too risky for them, it's up to him to untangle the skein of misdeeds in hopes of winning Wallender's freedom. Gaza, where nothing is as it seems, is the perfect setting for the puzzle Sirhan's second in a series offers.

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