The main character is Faith Zanetti, a foreign correspondent posted to Jerusalem, and I found her human and engaging. As the tagline said “Courage without equal, truth without bullshit, vodka without tonic.” I was ready to be entertained.

Faith was also a person who could believably encounter crime in the course of her job, and talk to a wide range of people in pursuit of asolution. I’ve never been to Israel, but the descriptions of it seemed realistic enough from what I’ve heard of it.

The big downside of this book is that the baddies are too obvious. I guessed the whodunnits very early on, and it was rather tedious ploughing through 200 odd pages to have this confirmed.

I think this is the author’s first crime novel, so maybe she’ll get better with plotting in future books. There is potential here, just not realised satisfactorily.