Tell the Truth, Shame the Devil

A week after the Metropolitan Police suspend Chief Inspector Bish Ortley for a physical altercation with a colleague, a bomb explodes on a bus touring Normandy--with Bish's teenage daughter on it.

Bish rushes to the site, and while his daughter is unscathed, there are casualties. As he peruses the roster of kids who were on the bus, he stops cold at one name: Violette LeBrac Zidane, the granddaughter of a man who blew up a British supermarket 13 years earlier, killing 23 people including himself. Violette survived the bus bombing, but disappears from the site with Eddie, another kid from the tour.

This triggers a police search and a swift trial by media. Headlines and Twitter declare Violette guilty of the bombing because of her grandfather and appearance: she has Arab roots. Teens who bear only a passing resemblance to Violette and Eddie are brutally attacked on the street. Desperate to bring in Violette and Eddie before more people are hurt, Bish becomes involved in the search, but in doing so must confront painful events from his past.

There's much complexity and beauty in Melina Marchetta's resonating Tell the Truth, Shame the Devil. While large in scope, exploring timely issues such as terrorism, racism, the plight of immigrants and social media's lynch-mob mentality, the book also tells the heartrending personal stories of multidimensional and memorable characters. Bish is like a British (and a quarter Egyptian) Harry Bosch, a relentless cop who believes everyone counts or no one does. In Marchetta's hands, everyone does count. --Elyse Dinh-McCrillis, blogger at Pop Culture Nerd

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