Double Blank by Yasmina Khadra

Ben Ouda, a senior ranking diplomat is found savagely murdered. Is this yet another victim of the never ending Islamic fundamentalist violence plaguing Algiers? Inspector Llob has doubts: Ben Ouda had too many friends, too many far fetched theories… Against the background of a city in turmoil, Inspector Llob navigates the Algiers underworld and its rich elite. He resists the pressure of politicians, fundamentalists and crooks, in his pursuit of the truth.

Translated by Aubrey Botsford from the French original, Double Blanc.

YASMINA KHADRA is the pseudonym of the Algerian author Mohammed Moulessehoul, who was born in 1956. A high ranking officer in the Algerian army, he went into exile in France in 2000, where he now lives in seclusion. In his several writings on the civil war in Algeria, Khadra exposes the current regime and the fundamentalist opposition as the joint guilty parties in the Algerian Tragedy.

Before his admission of identity in 2001, a leading critic in France wrote: "A he or a she? It doesn't matter. What matters is that Yasmina Khadra is today one of Algeria's most important writers."