Mystery of the Saudi desert

ONE OF the best developments in contemporary crime fiction of late is how willing, even eager, writers are to explore uncharted territory. What with the mini-boom of translated Scandinavian novels by Arnaldur Indridason, Karin Fossum and Jo Nesbo (to name just a handful), Deon Meyer's and Michael Stanley's criminal investigations in the wilds of Africa and Matt Beynon Rees' elegant mysteries set in Palestinian territories, readers have an embarrassment of global riches to choose from.

Now there is "Finding Nouf," the fictional outcome of San Franciscan Zoe Ferraris' habitation in Saudi Arabia for several years after the first Gulf War. Even if that information had been left off the jacket flap, it would be readily apparent; only a writer with experience both as a part of and apart from Saudi culture could have crafted such a novel.

Nayir ash-Sharqi is a Palestinian born and raised in Saudi Arabia, an outsider with an insider's understanding of his home country. He's also a guide, often hired by the wealthy Shrawi family, and his current task is most unpleasant: to track down the whereabouts of their 16-year-old daughter, Nouf, who went missing just three days before her wedding. Her body is discovered in the desert. When Nayir goes to the coroner to bring her home to her family, the sight of her corpse fills him with horror, tinged with an overdeveloped sense of modesty -- which soon gives way to curiosity as to how she died. A laboratory technician, Katya Hijazi, suspects murder. Katya is connected to the case through her engagement to Nouf's older brother Othman, and she teams with Nayir to look into Nouf's death. The duo's investigations uncover family secrets so tragic that murder is the least of it.

Ferraris does not skimp on the structural elements necessary for a good mystery, imbuing the story with escalating suspense that all but masks a telegraphed revelation of the murderer's identity. But "Finding Nouf" is more concerned with exposing a simmering world of heightened emotion held in check by the culture's restrictive and iron-clad rule. Nayir may chant "Allah forgive me for imagining her ankles" early in the search for Nouf, and he may be resigned to longing for female companionship he might never have, but he also approves of the order imposed by Saudi society. "It's designed to protect women," he tells Katya. "All the prescriptions for modesty and wearing the veil, for decent behavior and abstinence before marriage -- isn't the goal to prevent this very sort of thing from happening?"