Sand in Your Eyes

Previously entitled The Dead Bridegroom, this vintage Lizzy Badihi at its best. Reporter Lizzy decides to visit her mother in the protest tent set up by irate factory workers. A sandstorm has temporarily banished the workers, but Lizzy discovers a man who has been seriously beaten and subsequently dies. Another body is found nearby, and Lizzy discovers that both men are connected to the wealthy Tarshish family that owns the factory. The plot thickens and it becomes clear that something is very rotten in this family whose illustrious forefathers arrived in Palestine as pioneers prior to World War I and toiled for the Zionist enterprise. As always, Lizzy is a few steps ahead of the police and everyone else, and she is the one who catches the culprit at great personal risk. Aside from being an exciting whodunit, Lapid’s newest book offers a shrewd commentary on Israeli society and its modern-day bourgeois values.