A Palestine Affair

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Wilson's thrilling novel is a Hitchcockian page-turner, detailing affairs both romantic and political in the exotic atmosphere of British-ruled Palestine in the 1920s. At the close of World War I, Mark Bloomberg and his feisty American wife, Joyce, leave London for an art commission in Palestine, hoping the new surroundings will revive their ailing marriage. A Cubist landscape painter, Mark is surprisingly well paid for his images of Jerusalem. Joyce, still struggling to find her own vocation, becomes enthralled with the tenets of Zionism.

Soon after they arrive, the Bloombergs witness the murder of a prominent political figure; the prime suspect is Saud, an Arab teenager believed to have been the victim's lover. Meanwhile, Joyce falls under the spell of the investigating officer, Robert Kirsch, and Mark relinquishes his hold on their marriage, accepting a commission in Petra. But Joyce begins socializing with ardent Zionists, and in her insatiable quest for adventure, she agrees to deliver munitions to those running the movement -- a choice that will seal not only her own fate but that of her estranged husband and of Kirsch.

A dramatic, tension-filled novel about the ripple effect of the choices we make, A Palestine Affair is a tale both universal and specific, from a perceptive writer who deserves a larger audience. (Summer 2003 Selection)

The New York Times

Wilson has devised a story that tautens the sinuous strands of this period into a lethal knot. The strengths of his novel are the tension and pace of its plot, and its ability to suggest the falling barometer of a storm that will break fully only after another quarter century. — Richard Eder

The Washington Post

Like the best of historical fiction, Wilson's story is placed in an imagined past, but it is really happening right now. — Gershom Gorenberg

Publishers Weekly

This tightly knit novel of political intrigue and romance by Wilson (Schoom) is set in 1924 in Palestine under the British mandate. English Jewish painter Mark Bloomberg has left London (where he was besieged by terrible reviews) for Jerusalem, hired by a Zionist organization to produce paintings of "Life Under Reconstruction Conditions. Progress. Enterprise. Development." He's there with his American wife, Joyce, a Protestant socialite who is more enthusiastic about Zionism than he is. At the opening of the novel, a man staggers into Mark's home and dies in his arms from a stab wound and recent beating. He's dressed-mysteriously-as an Arab, but is actually an Orthodox Jew, Jacob De Groot, a thorn in the side of the Zionists for his agitation against the formation of a Jewish state. His murder is investigated by Robert Kirsch, a 24-year-old British police captain who, like Mark, is a secular Jew, and the British governor, Sir Gerald Ross. Their main suspect is a 16-year-old Arab boy named Saud. Gerald doesn't know if he's guilty, but he's sure that if his case is publicized there will be riots. To prevent this, Ross commissions Mark to paint ancient structures in Jordan and sends Saud with him. There, Mark does his own detective work on the De Groot murder, and comes to a different conclusion. While Mark is away, Robert stumbles into an affair with Joyce, whose relationship with her husband is unraveling. The book has a deliberately inconclusive ending, but throughout Wilson draws a vivid picture of Jerusalem and its soon-to-become vicious political rivalries. Wilson is exceptionally attuned to the range of opinion and complex sense of identity of the Jews living in Palestine, as well as the subtle but potentially explosive tension that characterizes everyday interactions under colonial occupation. (June) Forecast: The obvious political relevance of Wilson's subject should give this novel a well-deserved boost, and it should have crossover appeal for mystery readers looking for something a little off the beaten path. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Pre-Israel Palestine, which was partly featured in Wilson's The Hiding Room, is also the scene of his new novel. It is soon after World War I, and British-born painter Mark Bloomberg and his American-born wife, Joyce, have moved from London to Jerusalem. No sooner have they settled into their scenic and quiet Talpiot neighborhood when a middle-aged man dressed in Arab garb is killed on their doorstop. The police identify him as a prominent Orthodox Jew, and his murder is pinned on a young Arab boy. Mark and Joyce's marriage unravels, Mark goes off to Petra, Jordan, on a painting commission from the new British government with the Arab boy in tow, and Joyce has an affair with the young British police officer assigned to the murder case. Middle Eastern intrigue of the period, the colonial British, various love affairs, and Arab-Jewish conflict all loom large in this period novel. A fascinating read, this is a good frame for the current situation in the Middle East. Recommended for all libraries.-Molly Abramowitz, Silver Spring, MD Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

After a bizarre murder, the powder keg that is 1920s Palestine threatens to explode. Writing a thriller masquerading as a literary novel, Wilson (The Hiding Room, 1995, etc.) hurls us right into the thick of a Palestine still healing from the wounds of WWI, chafing under British rule, and fast swelling with Zionist activists. All starts off on a beautiful summer night that's shattered by the murder of an Orthodox Jewish man inexplicably dressed in Arab garb. Witness to the killing are Mark and Joyce Bloomberg-Mark a Jewish painter who's been drummed out of the London scene by scathing reviews, and Joyce an American gentile dilettante with a strangely fixated devotion to the Zionist cause. The third side of this triangle is Robert Kirsch, a British policeman who is just as blase about his Jewish heritage as Mark is, and also just as attracted to the nervy, live-wire Joyce. Kirsch's superior, an old-school, stiff-upper-lip type of the most enjoyable sort, proclaims himself a fan of Mark's work and hires him to head off into the Transjordan to paint, conveniently leaving the door open for Kirsch and Joyce's doomed affair. As often happens in books where writers have a larger agenda than simply puzzling out a crime, the murder investigation quickly becomes a quite desultory affair, with the primary suspect-a young Arab boy who may have been having an affair with the victim-being hidden from the cops by those who would prefer Jerusalem not explode in riots upon his arrest. What really interests Wilson, and reasonably so, is the ambivalent nature of the newly arrived Jews in Palestine, the barely concealed disdain they're held in by the stretched-thin British authorities and the razor's edgeall of them walk. Just the right mix of psychological incisiveness and historical drama: a bold story of displaced people and misdirected passions.