The Jealous

"It's easier to solve a crime than solve yourself"

Baghdad 295 hijri/907 CE

When a scholar dies at the Barmakid hospital in Baghdad, nearly everyone points the finger at his enslaved servant Mu’mina, as the one who called a demon to kill him. Tein, a former frontier fighter turned investigator with the Grave Crimes Section, has no time for religion, let alone jinn, and sets out to prove her innocent. But his partner, Ammar, has already pushed her case before the Police Chief’s court where she’s sure to be executed or condemned to rot in the prisons built into the walls of Baghdad’s Round City.

With the help of his twin sister, Zaytuna, his childhood friend, Mustafa, and Zaytuna’s friend, the untameable Saliha, Tein plunges into a dangerous investigation that takes them into the world of talisman-makers and seers, houses of prostitution and gambling, and the fractious secular and religious court systems, all to turn back the tragic circumstances set in motion by Ammar’s fears.