The Dead Sea Cipher, Elizabeth Peters, 1970

The Dead Sea Cipher, Elizabeth Peters, 1970, is perhaps one of the saddest mystery novels written in the last 30 years.... the novel begins in Beirut.

In 1970, Beirut was a cosmopolitan city, the capitol of Lebanon.

Then came the Lebanese Civil War:

The Lebanese Civil War was a multifaceted civil war in Lebanon. The war lasted from 1975 to 1990 and resulted in an estimated 150,000 to 230,000 civilian fatalities. Another one million people (a quarter of the population) were wounded, and today approximately 350,000 people remain displaced. There was also a mass exodus of almost one million people from Lebanon. The Post-war occupation of the country by Syria was particularly politically disadvantageous to the Christian population as most of their leadership was driven into exile, or had been assassinated or jailed.

There is no consensus among scholars and researchers on what triggered the Lebanese Civil War. However the militarization of the Palestinian refugee population, with the arrival of the PLO guerrilla forces did spark an arms race amongst the different Lebanese political factions.

The 1980s were especially bleak: much of Beirut lay in ruins as a result of the 1976 Karantina massacre carried out by the Lebanese Front, the Syrian Army shelling of Christian neighborhoods in 1978 and 1981, and the Israeli invasion that evicted the PLO from the country.

End
In March 1991, parliament passed an amnesty law that pardoned all political crimes prior to its enactment. The amnesty was not extended to crimes perpetrated against foreign diplomats or certain crimes referred by the cabinet to the Higher Judicial Council. In May 1991, the militias (with the important exception of Hezbollah) were dissolved, and the Lebanese Armed Forces began to slowly rebuild themselves as Lebanon's only major non-sectarian institution.

Some violence still occurred. In late December 1991 a car bomb (estimated to carry 220 pounds of TNT) exploded in the Muslim neighborhood of Basta. At least thirty people were killed, and 120 wounded, including former Prime Minister Shafik Wazzan, who was riding in a bulletproof car.

Legacy
Since the end of the war, the Lebanese have conducted several elections, most of the militias have been weakened or disbanded, and the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) have extended central government authority over about two-thirds of the country. Following the cease-fire which ended the 12 July 2006 Israeli-Lebanese conflict, the army has for the first time in over three decades moved to occupy and control the southern areas of Lebanon.

Lebanon still bears deep scars from the civil war. In all, it is estimated that more than 100,000 people were killed, and another 100,000 permanently handicapped by injuries. Approximately 900,000 people, representing one-fifth of the pre-war population, were displaced from their homes. Perhaps a quarter of a million emigrated permanently. Thousands of land mines remain buried in the previously contested areas. Some Western hostages kidnapped during the mid-1980s (many claim by Hezbollah, though the movement denies this)[citation needed] were held until June 1992. Lebanese victims of kidnapping and wartime "disappeared" number in the tens of thousands[citation needed].

Car bombs became a favored weapon of violent groups worldwide, following their frequent, and often effective, use during the war. In the 15 years of strife, there were at least 3,641 car bombs, which left 4,386 people dead and thousands more injured. Other favorite weapons were the AK-47 and rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs).

I'll be going through The Dead Sea Cipher in the coming weeks. There will be spoilers, as below:


Spoiler




The plot of the book is that more Dead Sea Scrolls have been found, including the Book of Jesus Christ, in which it is revealed that Jesus Christ had a son. Being an atheist, I dont' really see what the big deal of this would have been, but apparently since he's the son of God most people believe he wouldn't have had sex, or a child, and according to Elizabeth Peters at least, such knowledge - even if true - as being in the Dead Sea Scrolls! - would have launched violence. So the characters burn the scrolls.

(Peters postulates this again in her Amelia Peabody book The Mummy Case, which takes place in the 1890s. The discovery of a scroll that mentions "the son of Jesus" drives a missionary mad and causes him to destroy it.) (published in 1985).