The Man of Twists and Turns

The Campaign for the American Reader blog empire’s flagship is the Page 69 Test. The premise is this: open any book to page 69; if it grabs you, that’s a better indication of whether you’ll enjoy the book than simply reading the opening page. Try it on a book you like (and one you don’t), [...]

I like to do my bit to help save our planet. Last week in Rome my wife and I confronted that city’s brand new recycling program which, mainly, seemed to consist of workmen loading enormous amounts of bottles into their tiny dump truck outside our window at 5 a.m. We cheered them on and put [...]

You know the reputation. “Swiss” isn’t a nationality. It’s really an adjective meaning highly organized and perhaps even a little too punctilious.
That’s a myth. The place is just like the Middle East… (Look, I write fiction, but I may be onto something. Read on.)
On my recent reading tour, I stopped in Basel as a [...]

When my second novel A GRAVE IN GAZA was being translated into German, I received an email from my translator. He had a number of penetrating questions about certain phrases I’d used in the book. He also happened to be the only translator who asked me a question about any of my books (and my [...]

The first rock concert I ever attended was a performance by Canada’s greatest rockers Rush. I’ve loved Canadians ever since. In the London (Ontario) Free Press recently, Joan Barfoot gave me another reason to adore them. She gives a terrific review to the second of my Palestinian crime novels A GRAVE IN GAZA (UK title [...]

Robert Rees (no relation) writes about my books in this week’s edition of The Forward. Admirably Rob read all three of the books before passing judgment, and a good review it is (as well as an interview, because we spoke for some time on Rob’s recent visit to Jerusalem). “Rees has created an award-winning crime [...]

The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs has a forthcoming review praising my series of Palestinian crime novels “rich not only in character but in intellectual complexity.” I blush to report that WRMEA Managing editor Janet McMahon and Don Neff, a famed predecessor of mine as Jerusalem bureau chief for Time Magazine, say I’m “a [...]

The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs is organizing donations of books to libraries and schools in the Gaza Strip. I’m delighted to learn that my Palestinian crime novels are included on the list, which I should add includes works by many of my favorite Arab and Muslim writers (I’m a big fan of Tariq [...]

My second Palestinian crime novel A Grave in Gaza (UK title: The Saladin Murders) is just now published in Holland. The Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant asked me to contribute a list of my five favorite books, or at least those which’ve had the biggest impact on me as a writer. Here’s what I wrote:
Let It [...]

The video blog Watch the Video features the clip I made for the second of my Palestinian crime novels A Grave in Gaza (UK title: The Saladin Murders). The rest of my videos feature on my Youtube channel.
Many writers make promotional videos for their books these days, as you’ll see from the Watch the Video [...]