Hussin Alkheder

A debut mystery tells the story of a crime-solving imam looking for answers in the shadowy underworld of Damascus.
On a January day in 2010, the police arrive at a crowded Damascus apartment building--one that the Syrian authorities rarely visit. A dead woman, Hadiya Kishat, lies on a couch watched over by her five shellshocked children while the woman's husband and father-in-law assure the police that nothing is amiss. An envelope is passed to the lead detective, and the case all but disappears. A few weeks later, Hadiya's brother, Mustafa, approaches the imam of the Al-Shagoor Mosque, confused as to the circumstances of his sister's death and why her children live in poverty despite her husband's lucrative career in Dubai. The idiosyncratic Mullah Abdullah Al-Allab, an "unofficial private detective, who took advantage of his religious position to help people and solve their problems," agrees to look into the matter, and when he is next in Dubai, he pays a visit to Hadiya's widower, the wealthy but evasive Mazen Mis'ed. The mullah gets few answers, but when he flies home to Syria, he is arrested at the airport, held for several weeks, and tortured for reasons he does not understand. When he is finally released back to his family, he discovers that his favorite student at the mosque, Salah Almawazly, has disappeared without a trace. Unknown to Mullah Abdullah, Salah had become involved with a secretive religious organization committed to re-creating an Islamic caliphate, and he has already recruited Hadiya's disabled son, Khaled--who suffers from a congenital bone disorder--as a member. Now the mullah, who likes to play detective, will have to become a real investigator in order to discover the true fates of Hadiya and Salah and the secret that connects them.
Alkheder's detailed prose, though sometimes choppy, is often quite funny, as here when he describes Mullah Abdullah's unique career choices: "His father had told him a detective's career was not suited for faithful people, and had reminded him the hereafter was our final destination....He'd promised his father he would study the Islamic Sharia, but never promised that he wouldn't work as a private detective." The humor cuts against the larger sense of unease that characterizes the novel, which is full of dark alleys, secret agents, and people attempting to mind their own business. The mullah is a charming character--naturally curious, occasionally sanctimonious, and often completely tactless. The women who surround him--his wife and daughters and also the daughters of Hadiya--provide illuminating foils to his conservative worldview while also revealing a major societal fault line. The mystery, which branches off in many twisting tentacles, is captivating enough, but the book is most successful in the ways that its conflicts speak to the larger issues of life in contemporary Syria and elsewhere. Though the pacing occasionally lags, the author's well-constructed characters and inherently noirish setting--which should make the audience want to immediately find more mysteries set in Damascus--will keep readers engaged to the end.
A deliberative, Syria-set detective tale that manages to address intriguing modern issues.

--Kirkus review--

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