Frederick Highland, Night Falls on Damascus (St. Martin's Minotaur, 2006)
You know, I've read and reviewed quite a lot of murder mysteries for Green Man in the last couple of years. I've developed a special attachment to those that are set sometime in the past and a particular preference for those that take place in some interesting, slightly exotic locale, say London or Paris or Cairo or Istanbul. . . . Well, I have to confess, Night Falls on Damascus exceeded my wildest expectations for a novel that fits into this niche!
And I found it in such a strange way, mucking about on Amazon looking for fiction set in the so-called Near East. This title popped up on one of those long lists that an Amazon search yields -- I wonder if they will ever figure out how to make a more refined search engine? I read the published reviews and had a pretty good I would like the book. In a moment of weakness, when I was trying to get an order together that would be eligible for Super Saver shipping, I remembered the title and added it in. Am I ever glad I did!!
Apart from a few flashbacks, the action of the story takes place in the ancient city of Damascus during the early 1930s. At this point in time, between the wars and after the fall of the Ottoman Empire, France holds Syria and neighboring Lebanon under a League of Nations mandate. It's not a particularly stable situation. The novel unfolds against the backdrop of this instability, culminating in a dramatic attack on the city by an insurgent group.
The narrative is in third person, primarily using the viewpoint of Nikolai Faroun, recently arrived in Damascus to serve as Chief of the Prefecture (roughly equivalent to the police). Son of a Maronite (Lebanese Christian) businessman and a Russian acrobat, Faroun is more than a little out of place in Damascus, especially in his role as an employee of the French government. A former member of the French Foreign Legion who fought on the Western Front during the Great War, Faroun has a dark past -- and a secret mission -- that also play into the narrative.
The murder that drives the central plot is that of Vera Tamiri, a member of one of the city's old ruling elite families, a young and attractive woman known for her charitable works as well as for her decadent lifestyle (drinking, gambling, promiscuous sex). Faroun investigates the murder with the help of his Sergeant, Ihab Kabir; his secretary, Rebecca; and medical examiner Philippe Mansour. Two people in particular seem bent on obstructing his investigations. One is Vera's older brother Umar, who runs a contracting business; the other is Philomel Durac, the chief of the Damascus branch of the Surete, a law enforcement agency parallel to the Prefecture, set up to prosecute local opposition to the French rule. As the plot progresses, it becomes evident that Faroun and Durac have an intense personal dislike for each other that adds to the natural antagonism between the two police departments.
Night Falls on Damascus is a relatively short novel, just over 250 pages, typical of the mystery genre. The dust jacket is printed on high-gloss paper, the cover art is both exotic and noir, depicting a man in a topcoat and fedora standing in a shadowy corridor of the Great Mosque in Damascus. There's a simple, hand-drawn map of Damascus in the front of the book, including an inset that shows the location of that ancient city in relation to Aleppo and Beirut, the other cities mentioned in the story. Each of the short chapters begins with a nice little rectangular black and white design that resembles a motif from an Oriental carpet.
If I were to compare Night Falls on Damascus to some of the other murder mysteries I've read and reviewed, I would say that Nikolai Faroun is as interesting and sympathetic a protagonist as Joe Sandilands (reviewed here) and nearly as enigmatic as Erast Fandorin (reviewed here). Highland evokes the ancient city of Damascus in the 1930s as skillfully as Jason Goodwin does Istanbul nearly 100 years earlier (review is here).
According to his Web site, Frederick Highland has a PhD in English from the Writing Program at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. While he evidently makes his living as a writer, Night Falls on Damascus is only his second novel and the first, Ghost Eater, is not set in the same time or place. The website offers quite a lot of background material about Damascus in the 1930s that enhances the experience of reading this novel beyond its already high level. I could definitely enjoy more adventures of Nikolai Faroun. I can only hope that Highland and his publisher will decide a sequel or two is in order!
