The Man of Twists and Turns

The superb French crime fiction blog Le Blog du Polar has a French-language version of my story Damascus Trance. I released this new Omar Yussef short story last week as an immediate response to the Syrian government’s crackdown on freedom demonstrators. Blogger Catherine Dô-Duc suggested translating it and I was more than happy to put [...]

Martin Walker’s series of crime novels about the chief of police of a small town in the beautiful Perigord region of France is a delight. When we met at a recent “British Crime Fiction Night” in Darmstadt, Germany, he described the books as “French porn – wine, food, women – in a crime fiction frame.” [...]

World Cup fans, don’t fear hours of emptiness. Take up a work by an international crime fiction author. It’s the perfect replacement for your lost fix – and it’s a lot better for your soul, too. Here’s why. As the World Cup unfolded over the last month, newspapers all over the globe were filled with [...]

To introduce the next of my Palestinian crime novels, THE FOURTH ASSASSIN, my friend videographer David Blumenfeld filmed in New York (where the book takes place). His montages are mainly from Brooklyn’s Bay Ridge and Coney Island sections. He then recorded me, looking sweaty and frankly a bit doped up, in my favorite seedy cafe [...]

Each of Cara Black’s titles takes her computer-security PI Aimee Leduc on the trail of a murder in a different quartier of Paris — Montmartre, Clichy, Bastille. Aren’t those names alone enough to make you want to read them? The latest is Murder in the Latin Quarter, where Aimee tries to trace a Haitian woman [...]

I’m taking a break of a couple of weeks between drafts of my latest novel. To clear my head and to allow my body to accustom itself to a step up in desert heat here in Jerusalem (it’s hard to concentrate the first day the temperature hits 35 degrees, particularly when you write standing up [...]

Anyone in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv looking for a French teacher ought to contact my friend Joelle Roubine, a delightful Parisienne who can’t be blamed for my errors of French in the videos on my website but is certainly an excellent and sensitive teacher.

Je fais une lecture en francais chez la librairie francaise a Jerusalem ce mois. Voici les detailles : «Meurtre chez les Samaritains» de Matt Rees, Editions Albin Michel Tout est possible en Palestine, et rien ne dit que le jeune Ishaq, le fils du prêtre des Samaritains de Naplouse, n’a pas été exécuté parce qu’il [...]

It’s great to hear good news. It’s even better to hear it when you’ve just arrived in Paris. Everything sounds better when you hear it in Paris. Last week I had a few days in the French capital courtesy of my publisher Albin Michel, which brought me over for the release of my third Palestinian [...]

For those who happen to read some French, Planete Polar is a wonderful source of news and reviews about crime fiction, crime writers, and movie offshoots. It’s written by Philippe Lemaire, cultural correspondent for Le Parisien. Philippe’s a delightful fellow who’s interviewed me a couple of times — once in Paris, and also in Bethlehem [...]