City of Veils A Novel

Finding Nouf 's Katya Hijazi and Nayir Sharqi return for a mystery that provides a rare and intimate look into women's lives in the Middle East. Women in Saudi Arabia are expected to lead quiet lives circumscribed by Islamic law and tradition. But Katya, one of the few women in the medical examiner's office, is determined to make her work mean something. When the body of a brutally beaten woman is found on the beach in Jeddah, the city's detectives are ready to dismiss the case as another unsolvable murder—chillingly common in a city where the veils of conservative Islam keep women as anonymous in life as this victim is in death. If this is another housemaid killed by her employer, finding the culprit will be all but impossible. Only Katya is convinced that the victim can be identified and her killer found.