Assassins of the Turquoise Palace

Hakakian's first book, Journey from the Land of No, told the author's story of her years growing up in Iran under Ayatollah Khomeini. Her present work is an admirable, if somewhat overwritten, look at the September 17, 1992, terror killing of four Kurdish exiles who were holding a meeting in a small restaurant in Berlin. This crime resulted in a massive German investigation and an equally massive four-year trial that ended with guilty verdicts for the accused and, more importantly, a condemnation of Iran's leaders as the instigators of the murder plot. The author does a worthy job of presenting the facts through the eyes of the men who survived the shooting and the German authorities who prosecuted the case. Though the focus on Middle East politics should give this broad appeal, readers most interested may be the two million Iranian expatriates and the 150,000 who reside in Germany. The real heroes are not just the Kurdish dissidents but the men and women of Germany's legal community who fought against powerful diplomatic pressure in the interest of justice. (Sept.)