By The Pricking Of My Thumbs
The Sufi Storyteller
By Faiqa Mansab
7 Mar, 2025
Faiqa Mansab’s 2025 The Sufi Storyteller is a stand-alone mystery.
The library in a rarely-visited building doubles as Professor Layla Rashid’s office. It offers both books and solitude. Today the office contains an unwanted gift: a corpse.
The dead stranger is a woman; she is nearly nude save for a red cloak. Bruises on her neck suggest that she was strangled. In the pocket of the red cloak, Layla finds a note that reads: “Mira Heshmat, find me. The answer is stories.”
Layla has no idea who the dead woman is, but she recognizes Mira Heshmat’s name. Layla believes Mira is the mother who abandoned her when Layla was only nine years old. Layla also knows Mira as a renowned Sufi storyteller; Layla is an academic who studies Sufi fables.
Another complication: this is the second body to turn up in Layla’s vicinity. One could be chance. Two is a story, one whose plot has yet to be revealed.
Layla calls the police. Detective James Lance handles the case. Although Lance doesn’t think Layla is the killer (or one of the killers), he can see the obvious. There’s something that connects Layla to the victims or the killer. The note connects Layla and the two dead women to Mira. However, that’s as far as the evidence on hand can lead Lance. Nothing suggests the name or motivation of the killer.
The answer is in stories, specifically the story that preceded the murders, the story in which Layla and Mira are two prominent characters. The story is long and very unpleasant.
And as the third corpse found in Layla’s apartment shows, the story is far from over.
~oOo~
People who appreciate content warnings (beyond the obvious one for murder) should be aware that this book features sexual assault, domestic abuse, and the violent (off-stage) death of a pet1. Despite the presence of a murder-solving old lady (Mira), this is not a cozy.
Some time passed between my receiving the ARC and my reading the ARC. In that time, I completely forgot that this was a mystery. After all, almost everything I ask for is either fantasy or science fiction. So I had expectations when I started reading, expectations that turned out to be wildly inaccurate. There’s no surrealism or magical realism in this book, just stories2. The killer has a story they are telling, and a conclusion they desire.
Once I realized that this was a mystery, I found it easy to finger the likely killer3. Well, I got that right.
But that’s about the only thing that turned out as expected. I didn’t guess the motive, I didn’t expect the twists and turns of the narrative, I didn’t predict Mira’s traumatic backstory, I didn’t understand what connected the players in this particular tale. The novel surprised me (which is a fine thing when you’ve read as many mysteries as I have).
I found the prose a bit formal, but soon adjusted to it. The characters themselves were engaging, a very necessary element in a mystery. After all, if you don’t care what happens to the characters, why care about whodunit?
The Sufi Storyteller is available here (Neem Tree Press), here (Barnes & Noble), here (Bookshop US), here (Bookshop UK), here (Chapters-Indigo), and here (Words Worth Books).
1: The primary function of pets in mysteries is either to somehow solve the mystery or to demonstrate how awful the killer is. I must admit that I was a bad reader and I skipped ahead to see if the cat lived. I didn’t bother to do that for any of the human characters, which says something about my priorities.
2: There is one element of fantasy: although this is set in the US and the cast are primarily persons of color, not only do the cops actually care that there’s a murderer on the loose, they don’t cut corners by trying to hang the killings on the first POC they encounter.
3: Detective Lance fails to connect the dots, but not because he’s lazy or because he relies overmuch on his old friend Mira to do his homework. It’s because he’s a supporting character in a genre where supporting characters don’t get to resolve the plot.