I highly recommend her (so far) three mystery novels that take place in Saudi Arabia. She was married to a Saudi for a while and actually lived in the country for a couple of years. She shows the absurdities and Catch-22s that arise when, for example, you're trying to conduct a police investigation in a country where 1) The official line is that only foreigners commit crimes, 2) All the women are fully veiled in public, making identification hard and disguise easy, and 3) Men are not supposed to talk to women outside their families, 4) Women are not allowed to drive but may take taxis or use chauffeurs, as long as their husbands or fathers allow it, 5) Marriages are arranged and adultery is severely punished, 6) Servants and other low-status workers are lured from Third World countries with promises of high wages and glamorous jobs only to be kept in slave-like conditions and forbidden to leave the country without their employer's permission.
Ferraris also captures the ways that Saudi women cope or fail to cope with a society that educates them but sharply limits what they are allowed to do.
I'm sorry that she's written only three books so far.
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