City of Veils

When the body of a brutally beaten woman is found on the beach in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, Detective Osama Ibrahim dreads investigating another unsolvable murder—chillingly common in a city where the veils of conservative Islam keep women as anonymous in life as the victim is in death. But Katya, one of the few females in the coroner's office, is determined to identify the woman and find her killer. Aided by her friend Nayir, she soon discovers that the victim was a young, controversial filmmaker named Leila. Was it Leila's connection to an incendiary Koranic scholar or a missing American man that got her killed? City of Veils combines a suspenseful and tightly woven mystery with an intimate and nuanced portrait of women's lives in the Middle East. "Stellar.... A searing portrait of the religious and cultural veils that separate Muslim women from the modern world." ---Publishers Weekly Starred Review