Abdelilah Hamdouchi
Translated by Jonathan Smolin
"I want that gun, even if it's in a fish's stomach."
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When a fourth corpse in three days washes up in Tangier with a bullet in the chest, Detective Laafrit knows this isn't just another illegal immigrant who didn't make it to the Spanish coast.
The traffickers. The drug dealers. The smugglers. They know what it takes to get a gun into Morocco, and so does Laafrit. As his team hunts for the gun, Laafrit follows a hunch and reveals an international conspiracy to unlock the case.
A fast-paced crime thriller from the Arab west.
"Abdelilah Hamdouchi seems to have found the formula for the emergence of the Moroccan detective novel."—Libération Kaleidoscope
"The plotting is tight and watching the story's resolution unfold is a delight. . . . As a guilty-pleasure read, it is a winner."—M. Lynx Qualey, The National
"Much is packed into this relatively short, fast-paced novel. "—Sally Bland, The Jordan Times
"A refreshing and refined crime thriller . . . . Events unfold cleanly, with a sniper's precision."—Banipal
"Whitefly is an entertaining crime novel, a slice of insight into police culture. However, it is also a subtle hint at some of the most pressing issues tormenting contemporary Morocco, bubbling beneath the surface, and of all that cannot be filed away and put on the backburner quite as easily as a police case."—Banipal
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Born in Meknes, Morocco, in 1958, Abdelilah Hamdouchi is one of the first writers of police fiction in Arabic and a prolific, award-winning screenwriter of police thrillers. Many of his novels, including Bled Dry and the acclaimed The Final Bet, address democratic and human rights issues. He lives in Rabat, Morocco.
Translator Jonathan Smolin is the author of Moroccan Noir: Police, Crime, and Politics in Popular Culture (2013). He lives in Hanover, NH.
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"Writing is what allows me to be alive"
Abdelilah Hamdouchi, the author of Whitefly (Hoopoe, 2016) and forthcoming The Final Bet (Hoopoe), was born in Meknes, in northern central Morocco. "I realized that I wanted to become a writer after r…
Translator Jonathan Smolin's investigation into Noir fiction
Jonathan Smolin is associate professor of Arabic and chair of the Asian and Middle Eastern Languages and Literatures at Dartmouth College, with a keen interest in crime and police fiction, illegal imm…