Murder Under the Bridge: A Palestine Mystery

Rania Bakara, the principal narrator of Raphael’s compelling mystery, is the only female detective on the Palestinian police force in the occupied West Bank’s Salfit District, where her colleagues grudgingly accept her. Called out to investigate an abandoned car, Rania discovers the body of a woman on the outskirts of her village, and it’s soon obvious the victim is neither Palestinian nor Israeli. Because of the delicate situation between the Israeli and Palestinian police forces, Rania must work alongside Benny Lazar, an Israeli police officer, who seems to have much different motives when it comes to solving the crime. They determine that the deceased was Nadya Kim, an Uzbek woman who worked as nanny of sorts for Israel’s deputy defense minister. Narrating alongside Rania is Chloe, an American peace activist who’s in Palestine to advocate for nonviolence resistance. Both she and Rania work, in their own ways, to protect the innocent from easy labels like terrorist—labels that Raphael dismantles and examines in this provocative novel. [em](BookLife) [/em]