[close] I’m an award-winning crime novelist (aka Matt Rees) who lives in Jerusalem. As a journalist, I covered the Middle East for over a decade as Time magazine's Jerusalem bureau chief and Middle East correspondent for The Scotsman and Newsweek. I published a nonfiction account of Israeli and Palestinian society called Cain's Field: Faith, Fratricide, and Fear in the Middle East in 2004 (Free Press). My first crime novel, The Collaborator of Bethlehem (UK title The Bethlehem Murders), won the prestigious Crime Writers Association John Creasey New Blood Dagger in 2008, and has also been nominated for the Barry First Novel Award, the Macavity First Mystery Award, and the Quill Best Mystery Award. The New York Times called it “an astonishing first novel” and the French magazine L’Express called me “the Dashiell Hammett of Palestine.” It was named one of the Top 10 Mysteries of the Year by Booklist and, in the UK Sir David Hare made it his Book of the Year in The Guardian. Colin Dexter, author of the Inspector Morse novels, called my Palestinian sleuth Omar Yussef “a splendid creation.” My Omar Yussef Mystery series has been sold to leading publishers in 20 countries: the U.S., France, Italy, Britain, Poland, Spain, Germany, Holland, Israel, Portugal, Brazil, Norway, Denmark, the Czech Republic, Romania, Sweden, Iceland, Chile, Venezuela and Japan.
The second book in the series, A Grave in Gaza, appeared in February 2008 (and at the same time under the title The Saladin Murders in the UK). The Bookseller calls it “a cracking, atmospheric read.” The third book in the series, The Samaritan’s Secret, will be published in February 2009.
Contact me at matt@mattbeynonrees.com.
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