MattRees.net

Mrs. Rees has given me two lovely kids. She has enjoyed the presence of my parents. She even visited Wales with me. But I was never quite sure of her. Because she had only read one Raymond Chandler novel. In an effort to make our marriage complete, I suggested this week she augment her reading [...]

I happened to read a few crappy books in a row of late. So I did what I always do when I can’t afford for the next book I get into to disappoint: I re-read a Raymond Chandler. I picked “The Long Goodbye” off the shelf, because it’s my favorite. From the very first page, [...]

The crime novel tradition seems to have little connection to love. Maybe sometimes love in a perverse sense is the spur to the murder at the heart of most crime novels – the spurned husband killing his wife, for example. But usually the detective is a loveless loner, pining without much hope like the great [...]

Declan Burke runs an excellent blog on Irish crime writing. He also reviews for The Irish Times. Today the Times has this very gratifying review of my latest novel, along with write-ups of the new ones from Kate Atkinson, Don Winslow and Conor Fitzgerald, among others: “Matt Rees’s protagonist Omar Yussef generally prowls the mean [...]

I’ve been called the Dashiell Hammett of Palestine, the John Le Carre of the Middle East, the James Ellroy of…Palestine, the Graham Greene of Jerusalem, and the Georges Simenon of the Palestinian refugee camps. Depends which review you happen to have read. I’ve published three previous novels about Omar Yussef, my Palestinian schoolteacher/sleuth. Omar has [...]