Layover In Dubai

Corporate auditor Sam Keller, careful to a fault, has decided to live it up for a change, with a hedonistic layover in booming Dubai, where resort islands materialize from open ocean, fortunes are made and lost overnight, and skiers crisscross the snowy slopes of a shopping mall.

But when a colleague is murdered during a night on the town, Sam soon finds himself waist-deep in a bewildering, lethal mix of mobsters, prostitutes, and crooked cops.

Offering a chancy way out is Anwar Sharaf, the unlikeliest of detectives. A former pearl diver and gold smuggler with an undignified demeanor, Sharaf is sometimes as baffled as Sam by the changes to his homeland. But he knows where the levers of power reside, and as the unlikely duo work their way toward the heart of the case, each man must confront the darkest forces threatening Dubai from within.

Praise

“Layover in Dubai is a frantic tale of cold murder, cunning double-crosses and narrow escapes…. Fesperman, a critically acclaimed crime writer, has once again given us—to use Graham Greene’s term for his own books of straight-up intrigue and violent doings—a solid ‘entertainment.”
—NPR

“A terrific story about corporate espionage and outright greed… What makes this old chestnut of a plot work so well are the characters. Sam Keller really does think like a bean counter, and his ally, the wily policeman Anwar Sharaf, is wonderful…This is a great getaway book.”
—Toronto Globe and Mail

“(Fesperman) has a nose for powder-keg settings that offer social and political insights as well as vicarious thrills… By now, your stack of summer-reading books is probably teetering as high as one of Dubai’s shiny new skyscrapers. Stabilize it somehow and toss Layover in Dubai on top.”
—Richmond Times-Dispatch

“Sharaf’s passion for justice ignites the action, and Fesperman’s dialogue-packed plot explodes from there.”
—The Daily Beast

“Sam, Anwar, and Laleh are pleasingly conflicted characters… but Fesperman makes Dubai his book’s finest character. Fabulous wealth and opulence grind like tectonic plates against traditional Muslim culture, foreign workers outnumber ’emiratis’ by nine to one, and rival clans still plot against each other. Layover in Dubai has plenty of action, but it’s Fesperman’s portrait of a truly bizarre place that will captivate readers.”
—Thomas Gaughan, Booklist