O Jersualem

Travel Guide

Jerusalem is an exotic gauntlet narrow streets, twisting alleyways and exotic bazaars – a real life maze which become the biggest puzzle and ideal background for a criminal mystery. Post war Palestine with its early Jewish settlements, ornate buildings, Arab peoples, Christian monasteries are all evoked with more than a splash of local colour –

“Built around a spring in the desert hills, on a patch of rocky ground amid three valleys, there the people lived, and there they built the holy place.. Weapons evolved from bronze to iron, the city wall grew thicker and higher”

This is the story of the rather odd couple of Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes as they enter the Holy Land and the city of Jerusalem at a very significant time of its history.

This is a mysterious and deadly place, both unsuitable and unsafe for two foreign and ‘interfering’  detectives.

This is the place where the three major religions of the world come together but live apart. The land here is disputed by all of them and is the setting for some violent and intense battles  – although this book is set in the early 1900s, the overall setting is not that different to the Jerusalem of today.

Such a backdrop is ripe for political and cultural intrigue and the mystery hidden behind the veils of the walled city of course…

But it’s the way Jerusalem is evoked that draws you in – the long drawn out process of coffee making, the male tobacco ritual, the Arabic greetings, the donkeys.

“The occasional army lorry grumbling its way towards Bethlehem, the jackals and donkeys to which I am now so accustomed blending with the calls of the muezzins and the sound of church bells and the low, constant hum that emanated from the city of seventy thousand souls”

A fascinating place for a Sherlock Holmes style mystery.