Anyone who has heard Taha Muhammad Ali read his poetry will know he’s the greatest of Palestinian writers. There are others who’ve been better known — Mahmoud Darwish, for example, who died last year and was generally called the Palestinian national poet. But Taha, who sat quietly in his tourist shop in Nazareth until his first publication at the age of 50, is a truly original voice, escaping the politics and nostalgia that mars some of his colleagues’ work. Now in his 80s, Taha is still a delightful and deceptively bumbling presence on stage, when he reads. Translated by Peter Cole, he’s also marvellous. Now there’s an excellent biography of Taha, written by Cole’s wife, the Jerusalem writer Adina Hoffman and published April 2, it’s entitled “My Happiness Bears No Relation to Happiness: A Poet’s Life in the Palestinian Century.” It’s a line from one of his best poems. In a region that’s often full of hate directed at other people, here are some lines from one of Taha’s poems which encapsulate why I think he’s so great:
“I hate departure,
and I love the spring,
and the path to the spring,
and I worship the middle
hours of morning.”
And you wept,
and flowers bowed their heads,
and doves in the silk of their sorrow stumbled.

This month’s selection is the ninth book in Cara Black’s award-winning mystery series, MURDER IN THE LATIN QUARTER, which debuted last week in the number one spot on the San Francisco Chronicle bestseller list. Featuring spunky amateur detective Aimée Leduc, takes readers to the Left Bank of Paris where Aimée finds herself involved in Haitian politics and chasing after a potential half sister.

In the past week, LATIN QUARTER has received glowing reviews from the San Francisco Chronicle, the New York Times, USA Today, Entertainment Weekly, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, and the New York Times Book Review. This is in addition to a starred review in Kirkus; interviews in Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, Bookmarks Magazine, Shelf Awareness, and on Amazon’s Kindle Blog; and guest blog posts on Murderati, A Book Blogger’s Diary, and Largehearted Boy.

Info about the  Soho Press Twitter/Facebook bookclub: Anyone who has a Twitter or Facebook account can join, and the first five people to email soho AT sohopress DOT com will receive a free copy. Facebook users can discuss on the Soho Press Facebook page under “Discussions,” and Twitter users should tag tweets #SPBC for Soho Press Book Club.

The New York Times features me in an article published this weekend about Global Post, the new foreign news website. As the Times explains, Global Post is intended to replace all the foreign news that’s no longer produced by US newspapers, magazines and tv channels — because those media “cut costs” and fired everyone. I’ve been writing for Global Post, which is run by a chum of mine who worked in the Middle East for The Boston Globe, and enjoying the freedom from starchy journalistic constraints it gives me. Here’s what I wrote about my jaunt in Hillary Clinton’s Ramallah motorcade earlier this month. Read it. Definitely not starchy.

For my book shtick in full click here to see the video.

At the Jerusalem Book Week, I gave a talk about how I came to write my Palestinian crime series. With the discussion afterward, it ends up being over an hour long, including some talk about crime novels, the Middle East, politics and my personal history.

With the April 6 US release date for HAUNTING BOMBAY fast approaching, I am thrilled to announce the release of the book trailer, an artistic and atmospheric glimpse into the novel.

A true labor of love by friends and family, the 90-second trailer was directed by a close friend, Los Angeles actor/director Shishir Kurup.

A very special thank you to: Shishir Kurup (director), Alan Caudillo (cinematographer), Marcos Najera (editor), James Brennan (composer), Tonia Wallander/20TWENTYvfx (Visual Effects), Albert Gasser (Sound Design), Eric Budlong (Key Grip).

Visit hauntingbombay.com for reviews, an excerpt and a chance to win a signed copy of the novel.

On Global Post, I report on the fairly crazy mess (even by Middle East standards) in which both Israeli and Palestinian politics find themselves just now.

Guest blogging on A Book Blogger’s Diary, I write about why my publishers like to have a new title for the same book in almost every country…Choosing one is almost as hard as writing the book itself… Almost. And it tells you something interesting about each country in which the books appear.

In its listing of recommended books new to paperback, The New York Times features the second of my Palestinian crime novels A GRAVE IN GAZA, just out in softcover from Mariner/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. (The UK paperback, titled THE SALADIN MURDERS, has been out in small format for a while already.) Here’s what the Times writes:
“Omar Yussef, an aging Palestinian schoolteacher, is the hero of a series of mysteries by Rees, a former Jerusalem bureau chief for Time magazine. In this one, he encounters corruption and violence when he attempts to free a teacher from one of the United Nations schools who’s been jailed on spying charges. “Setting a mystery in the epicenter of a war zone challenges the genre conventions,” Marilyn Stasio wrote in the [New York Times] Book Review about the series’s first book, THE COLLABORATOR OF BETHLEHEM, but “it clarifies the role of the detective as the voice of reason.”
Incidentally, ‘The Collaborator of Bethlehem’ is titled THE BETHLEHEM MURDERS in the UK.

While it’s a touch early to be promoting my next novel in the Billy Boyle World War II mystery series - EVIL FOR EVIL (Soho Press, September 1st) -  it is the eve of Saint Patrick’s Day after all, and the book is set in Northern Ireland, a place unfortunately still as dangerous today as it was in 1943 when Billy Boyle found himself there.

So raise a glass of the black stuff and check out my guest blog today at:
http://abookbloggersdiary.blogspot.com/

Fad saol agat, gob fliuch, agus bás in Eirinn.
Which translates as:
Long life to you, a wet mouth, and death in Ireland.
EVIL FOR EVIL will deliver one out of three; your health and your drinks are up to you.

Cheers,

Jim

Check out Cara Black’s playlist for her award-winning Aimee Leduc mystery series on Largehearted Boy. The ninth book in the series, MURDER IN THE LATIN QUARTER, is now on sale. Look for upcoming reviews in the SF Chronicle, New York Times Book Review, and USA Today! For a limited time, you can also buy a Kindle of Murder in the Latin Quarter and get Murder in the Marais for FREE.

See more profiles of Cara Black on the Kindle Blog and in Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, Bookmarks Magazine, and Shelf Awareness.

To meet Cara in person, please visit her website and visit her when she comes to a store near you!