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MYSTERY IN THE MIDEAST

July 8, 2007 12:35 am

FOR THE FREE LANCE-STAR

AMYSTERY plot line proves an ideal way to access the mysteries, crimes and mixed motives that thrive today in the Mideast. And what better intersection for profane and religious conflicts than today's Bethlehem? But while a mystery may be the means, it is not the end.

In Matt Beynon Rees' "The Collaborator of Bethlehem," a beleaguered high school history teacher of Christians and Muslims, Omar Yussef, is well cast to play out the region's many perplexities.

A man of peaceful ideals facing early retirement in a hostile environment is an unlikely hero and an even less likely detective, but his humanistic spirit of tolerance gives him emotional access to others' charged-up lives.

Even-handedness is no substitute for armor or arms in these violent zones, and acting as a crime-solver only places him at greater risk.

This role is thrust on him when former student George Saba is arrested by Palestinian police as a collaborator with the Israelis. One evening after chatting with Yussef in a cafe, George returns to his home to find his wife and children huddled in a corner, terrorized by two gunmen on their roof firing in the direction of Israelis and drawing return fire.

Instilled with Yussef's values, George grabs an antique pistol and drives them off. Bad move. They are top honchos of a local resistance group, and they are not pleased. One of them makes a menacing throat-slitting gesture as they exit.

When a young resistance fighter is mysteriously murdered, George is fingered, arrested and held for a trial which will certainly send him to the firing squad. Yussef had invested his hopes for a better future in students like George, and feels a degree of responsibility for his plight. His old friend, a former terrorist--or freedom fighter, depending on one's politics--displays greater devotion to his booze than to his job as chief of police, so Yussef begins his own investigation. But the clues and the trail of evidence do not follow a straight line. And by the end the larger crimes of complicity and betrayal pervading this haunted region have been laid bare.

In fact, by setting his climax in the Church of the Nativity, designated site of Christ's birth and now an unlikely asylum for criminal suspects, the author brings in all three of the region's major religions.

A mystery novel? True, but superb fiction. It's right up there with Graham Greene and John Le Carre.