Omar Yussef is a painful­ly eth­i­cal and intel­lec­tu­al­ly hon­est mid­dle aged his­to­ry teacher, liv­ing and teach­ing in the Dehaisha Pales­tin­ian refugee camp on the out­skirts of Beth­le­hem. The hus­band of one of his favorite for­mer stu­dents is killed and anoth­er of his stu­dents accused of the homi­cide. While pay­ing his respects to the fam­i­ly of the vic­tim Omar dis­cov­ers evi­dence that impli­cates the head of the local Martyr’s Brigade. Omar feels com­pelled to inves­ti­gate the mur­der and prove his friend inno­cent, but doing so means putting him­self and his fam­i­ly at great risk. 

Rec­og­niz­ing that the Martyr’s Brigade thugs have tak­en over Beth­le­hem and are run­ning it accord­ing to their own bru­tal rules, Omar Yussef finds him­self in a life chang­ing moment, hav­ing to choose between his family’s safe­ty and the greater good of their community. 

Far from the usu­al for­mu­la­ic mys­tery nov­el, The Col­lab­o­ra­tor of Beth­le­hem is a sen­si­tive, almost poet­ic char­ac­ter study. Matt Beynon Rees, the for­mer Jerusalem bureau chief for Time mag­a­zine, has cre­at­ed a com­plex pro­tag­o­nist who takes the read­er on a heart­break­ing jour­ney through a city under siege and his own philo­soph­i­cal debate about how best to react to the trag­ic cir­cum­stances that sur­round him.