Omar Youssef is an elderly teacher in a school system in a refugee camp in Bethlehem. He is Palestinian and has come to New York to address the United Nations Assembly to explain the lives and education of children living in extremely trying conditions.
The first place Omar goes is to the small apartment where his son lives with two other young Palestinian men. When he arrives there is no answer to his knock and he enters the apartment. All is quiet and he finds a dead young man who has been decapitated lying across the bed in the bedroom. The head is no where around and Omar strongly fears this was his son who was murdered. He is relieved when he finds out that it is not his son.
Omar teams up with a New York police detective who is a former Bethlehem resident and with a Palestinian Police Chief who is in New York to protect the President of Palestine who is also to address the UN. As they travel around the neighborhood known as “Little Palestine” two attempts are made on Omar’s life. Then the owner of a small café next to his son’s apartment is murdered.
In a complex plot where one surprise after another keeps us readers turning the pages Matt Rees gives us a rare and refreshing look at the human side of the Near Eastern people. Omar is the normal man trying to live a peaceful life with his family and is forced into confrontations with people who believe that all people from his part of the world are terrorists. He is treated really badly but throughout the story Omar also gives us the view of the common man’s knowledge that his own leaders are corrupt and are, in fact, responsible for much of his people’s suffering. As long as corrupt leaders are in power skimming money and keeping the common man down there will never be peace in the Near East.
Well, “The Fourth Assassin” can be enjoyed on two levels. First, it is a great mystery novel wherein the author provides plenty of clues and red herrings and second, it is a strong social commentary that gives the astute reader a much better understanding of a people who must live under harsh conditions and bear the burden of the sins of their fellow Muslims who are extreme and not at all representative of the normal Muslim.
A fine book, “The Fourth Assassin” rates a 9 of 10 on the Weaver meter.
