Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    The Saladin Murders
    Unavailable
    The Saladin Murders
    Unavailable
    The Saladin Murders
    Audiobook10 hours

    The Saladin Murders

    Written by Matt Rees

    Narrated by Daniel Philpott

    4/5

    ()

    Unavailable in your country

    Unavailable in your country

    About this audiobook

    Omar Yussef, teacher-turned-detective, is sent to the troubled Gaza Strip to carry out a routine school inspection. There he learns that a fellow teacher has been arrested, and, instinctively recognizing the signs of grave injustice, he sets out to investigate. The person responsible for the teacher's arrest is Colonel al-Fara, the most powerful - and dangerous - man in Gaza, and Omar's friends urge him not to intervene. But Omar confronts the colonel, and soon finds himself caught in a ruthless power struggle...
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherW. F. Howes Ltd
    Release dateNov 1, 2008
    ISBN9781407431017
    Unavailable
    The Saladin Murders

    Related to The Saladin Murders

    Related audiobooks

    Crime Thriller For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      The Border Merchant

      Nov 6, 2019

      The Border Merchant
      11 min read

    • Article

      Angel Lust

      Jan 25, 2022

      Angel Lust
      8 min read

    • Article

      Foreign Body Ear

      Aug 1, 2017

      Foreign Body Ear
      6 min read

    • Article

      Small Problem

      Jul 23, 2019

      Small Problem
      9 min read

    • Article

      Isabella Hammad

      Sep 15, 2017

      It happened like this. A week after the Six-Day War, Sam walked to the eastern bank of the Jordan River. He was working as a counselor that summer near Karameh, at a day camp for boys. Although the fighting occurred further upstream, camp activities

      16 min read

    • Article

      Love In The Time Of Treason

      May 6, 2021

      Love In The Time Of Treason
      17 min read

    • Article

      Where Ghosts Linger

      May 28, 2021

      Where Ghosts Linger
      10 min read

    • Article

      Hamtramck, Michigan: An Evolving City Of Immigrants

      Mar 28, 2017

      Hamtramck, Mich., used to be mostly Polish. Now, the population has changed, with a growing population of Muslims, coming mostly from Yemen and Bangladesh.

      5 min read

    • Article

      Scrabble On The Nile

      Jul 16, 2021

      Scrabble On The Nile
      3 min read

    • Article

      In The Desert, I Find My Way

      Dec 30, 2020

      Three years after the Six-Day War, I joined other foreigners at a program in Israel’s Negev, hoping to prove my independence.

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Color of Hope

      Oct 10, 2023

      The thing I remember most about him was his huge, shiny black shoes. No one I had seen since teaching at Chavez School wore such shoes. In the sweltering climate of this Arizona city, the boys wore what used to be called tennies, and the girls, on th

      6 min read

    • Article

      Journey Of Hope

      Dec 4, 2022

      Journey Of Hope
      8 min read

    • Article

      Palestinian Horror Story

      Mar 25, 2024

      by Nathan Thrall (Allen Lane, $40) Ona rainy day in February 2012, Abed Salama received the kind of phone call every parent dreads. His 5-yearold son Milad had been excited about a kindergarten trip to a play centre on the Jerusalem-Ramallah road i

      2 min read

    • Article

      My Friend Anne Frank

      Jun 14, 2023

      My Friend Anne Frank
      12 min read

    • Article

      In The Belly Of The Beast

      Aug 9, 2022

      In The Belly Of The Beast
      13 min read

    • Article

      Writing Family History

      Dec 15, 2021

      Writing Family History
      5 min read

    • Article

      My Friend Anne Frank

      Jun 14, 2023

      My Friend Anne Frank
      12 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Saladin Murders

    4/5

    76 ratings10 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      I happened to start reading this just before the current conflict in Gaza hit the front page. This book helped me conceptualize the power struggles there. In this series, Israelis exist only as a dragon against whom you can prove your manhood or advance your own agenda -- The Israelis never have names or faces, the Palestinians' greatest enemies are each other, and peace would rob warlords of their power. Omar Yussef is an Everyman who speaks truth to power and wrests small victories from the midst of huge defeats. The overall concept is great. The execution is pretty good. Throughout most of the book, I was riveted. The writing was very polished. The last few chapters, however, were a little rushed -- I had trouble picturing the action of the final scenes and I really didn't understand the role of the cemetery caretaker and the final funeral.
    • 4/5
      A really good good book detailing a jailing of a UN employee the kidnapping of another UN employee and various attempted murders on the main character, who is also employed by the UN but is a Palestinian from Bethlehem.
      The book takes place in the Gaza Strip in around 2010 and it was a explosive disaster even then
      The author knows his subject and the area well as he was a middle east correspondent for 10 years in Israel for Time magazine. The book was a great intro to what a mess this part of the world is and why.
    • 2/5
      Frankly I found this a very depressing read, and knowing that reality probably mirrors this fictitious tale in many of its grisly dimensions was very bitter to contemplate.
      This is the second Omar Yussef mystery and it plays out in Gaza, a dump in every sense of the word according to the protagonists. The dirt, the sandstorms, the corruption, the religious zealotry, the garbage, the ruins, and so many deaths and corpses are the order of the day in that terrible place.

      Omar Yussef comes to Gaza as part of a UN group. He is investigating with his UN boss the arrest of a colleague who is also a part time lecturer at Al-Azhar University. This innocuous beginning quickly spirals into something sinister as one UN man gets kidnapped and another is assasinated. Soon the corpses pile up among Palestinians rival factions from one killing to another revenge. I lost track of the motives, the agendas and the rivalries. What is left is the deep sense of futility as corrupt politicians fight it out and squabble over this pile of garbage that is Gaza. In this story Israeli violence and hostility do not exist; it is all about Palestinian internal strife. The violence between rival factions is extreme and almost mindless, and the distasteful part is that you cannot even dismiss LAW wielding fighters as far-fetched. Just because the events take place in Gaza, the craziest and the most mindless violence is possible.


      A woman in the story says: "Sometimes I think that the only Palestinians who do not weep are the dead ones".
      I was saddened by a little boy, who showed Omar Yussef the doves he is raising on the roof, an innocent child who would soon be struck by tragedy and grief. Nobody remains innocent for long in this environment. Yet people laugh and joke, they exchange wisecracks in the face of death and enjoy a distinct gallows humor, which rang very true. Those Palestinians are tough, and they can put up with a lot of suffering. Omar Yussef says: "I am Palestinian" by way of explanation of his tough nature and tolerance of hardship, but even he was pleased to leave the dust of Gaza, its graves and graveyards behind.
    • 5/5
      Omar Yussef, history teacher at a UN school in Bethlehem and somewhat reluctant amateur detective, travels to the Gaza strip to help with a routine school inspection. As soon as he arrives he learns that one of the teachers at the school has been arrested because he accused the university of selling degrees to army officers so they can gain promotion. Despite being warned off Yussef starts to investigate the teacher's arrest but soon becomes embroiled in a violent power struggle between competing groups in Gaza who all treat each other and any innocent bystanders unlucky enough to be in the way as little more than pawns.

      If bravery is defined as taking action in spite of the fear you feel then Omar Yussef must be the bravest hero of them all. He faces constant danger and death threats and in this book he doesn't have the benefit of his extensive family connections to offer any protection (Gaza may as well be a million miles from his native Bethlehem). It's clear that Yussef is afraid of the danger but he feels such a moral obligation to do the right thing that he acts despite his fear. But I don't want the description of him as extraordinarily brave to make him sound as if he's somehow unreal because he's a terrifically believable character: an ageing, slightly vain, former drunk who loves his family, his homeland (whatever that means) and history and who refuses to wallow in all the inertia-inducing rhetoric and mythology about the occupation of Palestine.

      As with Rees' first book the other significant character here is the place. This is a story that could not have been set anywhere other than Palestine which is, once again, depicted in all its stark despair. Vengeances both personal and political, corruption. violence and a seemingly endless obsession with the past abound. Yussef's moral strength and respect for all life is all the more admirable because he's surrounded by people who have little of either quality. The casual way in which people are killed throughout the book is breathtaking, especially when you know that Rees has based scenes in the book on the many real events he covered during his years as a journalist in the region.

      Often when fiction has a 'message' or gets political I feel like I'm being preached at and disengage angrily. That didn't happen with this book. Rather than feeling like I've been lectured to I feel as if I've been given the gift of a glimpse of reality in the Middle East that no amount of news- watching could ever provide. A couple of days before I finished the book I read Rees' explanation for writing the series and his notion, that he can be more truthful in writing fiction than he ever could while writing news, makes perfect, twisted sense. It also helps explains why reading The Saladin Murders is an emotionally intense but satisfying and, dare I say, rewarding experience.
    • 3/5
      Omar Yussef is a middle aged history teacher who somehow becomes embroiled in the politics and warfare of the Gaza strip. He is a great central character; full of warmth, although I struggled to find his motivation for a lot of his actions in the story, other than he is "a good man." This book hasn't changed my life, but it has certainly altered my perception of the complexities of life in a place like Gaza.
    • 5/5
      In this second book about Omar Yussef/Abu Ramiz, he has reason to travel from his home in Bethlehem to the misery of the occupied Gaza Strip. When he enters Gaza, a storm arises in both the figurative and the literal sense; the sand is as ever-present and intrusive to Abu Ramiz as is the violence and corruption and, although both overwhelms him, he manages to overcome his own fears and stands by his personal morals even in the face of danger. His morals are what attracted me to him in the first book (The Collaborator of Bethlehem) and it's really what makes him one of my favorite characters - although his body is weak and he is quite vulnerable, he can not watch the injustices (as he admits to having done in his youth), but needs to act. He may be physically weak, but, as we find out at the nail-biting resolution of this book, there is absolutely nothing amiss with his mental faculties - what a clever, clever man!
    • 3/5
      A UN member on a school inspection team is kidnapped after the team is told that one of their teachers has been arrested. This is Omar Yussef second "case".
    • 4/5
      The second Omar Yussef mystery, about a middle aged Palestinian teacher and school director. He is in charge of a school in
    • 4/5
      Part of a series of stories linked by common characters. Based in the Israel/Palestine area with links to England, A fascinating and fast moving fictional detective story which gives an interesting insight into the lives of Israelis and Palestine families. Difficult to put down once started.
    • 5/5
      Perhaps perfect. I enjoyed Matt Beynon's Rees' "Collaborator of Bethlehem," but the second installment of the Omar Yussef series is one of the best in the genre I've read in a long time. I don't think I can find a single fault. The protagonist, Omar Yussef, continues to evolve, and is a more complex character in "A Grave in Gaza" than he was in "Collaborator."I think this one will stick with me for a while. I finished it a week ago and I am still mulling it over.