Matt Rees

Matt Rees is a Welsh novelist and journalist. He is the author of The Palestine Quartet, a series of crime novels about Omar Yussef, a Palestinian sleuth, and of historical crime novels. He is the winner of a Crime Writers Association Dagger for his crime fiction.

His first work of nonfiction was Cain's Field: Faith, Fratricide, and Fear in the Middle East in 2004 (Free Press).

The New York Times called The Collaborator of Bethlehem, the first of his Palestinian crime novels about Bethlehem sleuth Omar Yussef, “an astonishing first novel.” The Independent (London) hailed Omar as “the next big sleuth in crime fiction.” Le Figaro called the book “a masterpiece.” Under its UK title The Bethlehem Murders the first Omar Yussef novel won the Crime Writers Association's John Creasey New Blood Dagger in 2008.

Rees's writing has been compared with the work of Graham Greene, John Le Carre, Georges Simenon and Henning Mankell. The French magazine L’Express called him “the Dashiell Hammett of Palestine.” Rees's books have sold in 25 languages.

Rees was born in Newport, Wales. As a journalist, Rees covered the Middle East for over a decade. He was TIME's Jerusalem bureau chief from 2000 until 2006, writing award-winning stories about the Palestinian intifada. He also worked as Middle East correspondent for The Scotsman and Newsweek.