Bowles and Rachel Ingalls, among others) that these misfortunes are at least in part the projections of the European traveler's deepest, ingrained desires or fears.

She becomes hyperconscious of suspicious goings-on in their building, including a shadowy figure carrying a gun in the hallway. The decorative marble lining Frances' staircase is ''flecked with black and a fatty cream, revoltingly edible, like some kind of Polish sausage.A chilling portrait of an authoritarian society as a young Englishwoman moves with her husband into a Saudi Arabian neighborhood and finds murder lurking behind the shuttered windows and closed doors. that, once, someone might have offered him a bribe; but through the other party's ineptitude and poor English, and Andrew's naivete, the occasion had passed without profit.

She has only constantly changing rumours to hang on to, and no one with whom to share her creeping unease.And certainly some of the Saudi problems, such as the corruption, are abetted by the culture of the Western companies there to make fast and easy money. My sister lives in Abu Dhabi and her husband works in construction, so it rang a few familiar bells for me!

But the death isn't ruled a murder—and might never have been if one of the gang—a cadging sybarite named Bunny Corcoran—hadn't shown signs of cracking under the secret's weight. The apartment building on Ghazzah Street offers some diversion -- and some mystery, as there are sounds coming from a supposedly empty apartment. The terrific empathy and the skillful craftsmanship that distinguish the winner of the Man Booker Prize are already abundantly evident in this book. First-novelist Tartt goes muzzy when she has to describe human confrontations (the murder, or sex, or even the ping-ponging of fear), and is much more comfortable in transcribing aimless dorm-room paranoia or the TV shows that the malefactors anesthetize themselves with as fate ticks down.

Jeff Pollard was a sometime employee of Turadup, William and Schaper, a firm known throughout the construction business as Throw'em Up, Bill'em and Scarper. At the beginning of the book, Andrew’s contract is coming to an end and he has not found other employment. Images Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape Donate Ellipses icon An illustration of text ellipses. She keeps her doubts to herself, for example, when she is told that hand amputations are done humanely, with a doctor there to prevent infection. With marvelously understated wit, Mantel chronicles a world of teas and dinner parties that eventually coalesce into a sinister story of horror just beyond a veil.