<div><B>In WWI Egypt, a murdered girl and her runaway sister lead the Khedive&rsquo;s head investigator to an underground slave trade in this &ldquo;deftly plotted&rdquo; mystery (<I>Booklist</I>, starred review).</B><BR />  <BR /> Cairo, 1913. Pasha Ali Maher has received an unexpected gift: a traditional Bride Box. But what should contain treasures anticipating a marriage instead contains the body of the would-be bride herself. At the same time, a little girl is discovered riding under a train from Luxor&mdash;having escaped from her captors&mdash;and the Mamur Zapt, Head of the Khedive&rsquo;s Secret Police, is called in to investigate.<BR />  <BR /> Though the two girls are discovered to be sisters, the Pasha and his lady insist they have no connection to the crimes. And as British rule begins to falter, throwing the Mamur Zapt into political turmoil, his investigations uncover a still-thriving slave trade that was supposed to have been stamped out in Egypt long ago.<BR />  <BR /> &ldquo;This is a deftly plotted, cleverly written, highly entertaining mystery, but it&rsquo;s the gentle humor and the warmth of the characters that earns it two thumbs decisively up.&rdquo; &mdash;<I>Booklist</I>, starred review</div>

The Bride Box

<div><P>It's World War I. Britain has ruled Egypt since 1881 under a shadow government headed by its Agent and Consul General under the nominal authority of Egypt's hereditary ruler the Khedive. The head of the Secret Police is the Mamur Zapt, an office currently held by a Welshman, Captain Gareth Cadwallader Owen. And as the clouds of the war further darken Egypt's sun-lit skies, he has his hands full. On the professional front, there's all that commotion that started in Cairo's Camel Market. On the personal side, Owen has married his longtime lover, the lovely Pasha's daughter, Zeinab, a move with serious consequences for both of them and riddled with political and social pitfalls. Neither can be fully accepted by the other's culture and community. Against this, the perils of the Great War pale....</P></div>

The Point in the Market

<div><P>The Great War has ended, and the army is keen to be demobbed. But Willoughby, the new British High Commissioner in Egypt, has managed to affront the Khedive by refusing to receive rival delegations fueled by rising nationalism. Then, when some Armenians, Copts, and English civil servants are attacked, a state of emergency is declared.</P><P>Gareth Cadwallader Owen is the Mamur Zapt, the Head of the Khedive's Secret Police. Unlike his British colleagues, Owen works for the Khedive. His is an uncomfortable perch as agitation for political and social restructuring grows. Furthermore, Owen is married to a pasha's daughter, Zeinab, herself straddling a cultural divide.</P><P>The Khedive has declared a procession: he'll drive around Cairo with his Ministers. Owen, who has spent his career defusing political time bombs, learns the streets have been made dangerous by threats of real bombs. The fi rst order of business is to ward them off. The second is to ensure the safety of an impending major European delegation to the capital.</P><P>But what does it all have to do with Owen's shiny new motor car?</P></div>

The Mark of the Pasha

<div><P>The Mamur Zapt, Head of Cairo's Secret Police under British Rule, did not concern himself with routine police matters. His are the intrigues, the shadowy and sinister events aimed at creating political instability—an event such as the discovery of the body of a dog in a Coptic tomb. This supreme Moslem insult could touch off an explosion among the Christian community. Equally volatile is the visit from an English Member of Parliament intent upon inspecting the Cromer administration's accounts. It is not a welcome time for a command that Captain Owen, the Mamur Zapt, show the MP's niece the sights. Worse, the sights include a dancing dervish stabbed before the lady's very eyes. Is this all part of a pattern that could lead to blood on the streets and set Cairo's ethnic communities at each other's throats?</P></div>

The Night of the Dog

<div><P>"Tourists are quite safe provided they don't do anything stupidly reckless," Captain Owen, the Mamur Zapt, Head of Cairo's Political CID under British Rule, assures the press. But what of Monsieur Moulin, kidnapped while taking tea on the terrace at Shepheard's Hotel? How has Mr. Colthorpe Hartley also disappeared? No one actually saw either victim vanish. Are these ordinary crimes? Are they intended as deliberately symbolic blows at the British? Or are they just a means of discouraging tourism? Owen had better unravel it quickly or else. And where better to start than with the donkey-vous beneath the terrace, home of Cairo's humble but enterprising youths who hire out their donkeys for photographs and rides.</P></div>

The Donkey-Vous

<div><P>The Mamur Zapt, head of Cairo's CID in the heyday of (the indirect) British rule, focused on political, not police, matters. With the bustling new century, the loosening of imperial ties, and the rise of nationalism, his was a busy office. The attempted assassination of a veteran politician raises the spectre of a major terrorist statement at the capital's principal religious festival where the faithful celebrate the Return of the Holy Carpet from Mecca.</P><P>Easily navigating multiple nationalities, three principal languages, and four competing legal systems, not to mention the intricacies of shadow and actual governments, Captain Owen, the Welsh incumbent, bolsters the Mamur Zapt's office with the aid of a host of memorable characters.</P></div>

Mamur Zapt & the Return of the Carpet

<div><P>While riding home to lunch on his donkey, Fairclough of Customs is rudely unseated by shots fired from behind. The incident is but the first of a series of attacks seemingly aimed at public officials. Even Captain Gareth Owen, the Mamur Zapt, British head of Cairo's Secret Police, barely escapes. Is a sinister campaign to undermine foreign rule under way? And who are "the men behind"? True, the Nationalist movement is rising after thirty years of the British Protectorate, and the new Liberal Government in London is more sympathetic than the heavy-handed Conservatives to local rule. But can Owen discount more mundane agendas?</P><P>Under orders to act quickly, Owen delves into both maneuverings at the Khedive's court and the goals of a commercial delegation. His investigations not only carry him in to the city's student quarter but out into the countryside and onto a rural estate. Along the way he juggles a Pasha whose political star is fading, a bomb-wielding Berber, and the knife-happy gypsy Soraya who seriously annoys Owen's main squeeze, the fiery and lovely Zeinab, herself the daughter of a pasha. Which of these explosive mixes is most likely to prove injurious to the Mamur Zapt as well as to the government he serves?</P></div>

The Men Behind

<div><P>1909 Egypt. It's easy to go adrift in the complex political currents swirling through a country that has long been "advised" by the British after the mess it made of its finances, but now swelling with nationalism. And you can't discount the self-interest of the Khedive, the Royal Family, and of the country's pashas. Nevertheless, Captain Gareth Owen, Head of the Cairo Secret Police, has to ask, "Where's the body?" The girl, perhaps a woman of ill repute but one definitely lost overboard, had been glimpsed lying on a sandbank in the Nile. Then she vanished. Why had Prince Narouz hired the dahabeeyah? Surely not just to cruise to Luxor—the man has no interest in antiquities. And why was Miss Sekhmet on the boat anyway? Was it for the Prince's pleasure, or to embarrass him? Under heavy pressure from politicos and his own mistress, the strong-minded Zeinab, Owen steers a difficult course after a murderer....</P></div>

The Girl in the Nile

<div><P>Cairo, 1910. Captain Owen, The Mamur Zapt, is the head of Egypt's Political CID in the heyday of British Rule. He is ultimately responsible for law and order in the Khedive's Cairo. When the rules, whether obvious or hidden, are flouted, he steps into action - although it sometimes looks like he's merely stepped sideways, out of the way.</P><P>Now it is the end of the boom, leaving banks beleaguered and borrowers in trouble whether the poorest land-working fellahin or the richest land-owning Pashas. Then a civil servant suspiciously dies at his desk. The whiff of corruption is in the air. Even Owen, who is supposed to be investigating the affair, appears to be living beyond his means. As he turns to such unlikely allies as the Grand Mufti, the local barber, and the Widow Shawquat, he penetrates to the heart of such sinister organizations as the Khedive's Agricultural Society. The rich are tricky, and money speaks louder than words, challenging Owen to use all his skills to stop the Camel of Destruction....</P></div>

The Camel of Destruction

<div><P>Someone is running a campaign to discredit Cairo's senior police officials. Is Garvin, the Commandant, playing power games, or is he trying to get to the bottom of the allegations of corruption? What about Garvin's senior deputy, McPhee, a man who might finally be going round the bend? And what of the Mamur Zapt himself? He may be the British head of the city's Secret Police, but is he above suspicion? After all, he does have an Egyptian mistress, placing him not only under the uncomfortable suspicion of having divided loyalties, but bringing him under her own stern scrutiny.</P><P>Owen's attempts to get answers and avoid political (and personal) embarrassment take him into uncharted territory, the world of Cairo's female rites. And more terrifyingly, into one of Egypt's traditional crafts—snake catching. How do you milk a cobra? Do snakes have ears? Can they be tamed? Can a mere woman fill the traditional role of snake catcher without the undying opposition of the Rifa'i—and without losing the plague of Egypt?</P></div>

The Snake Catcher's Daughter

<div><P>Michael Pearce's tenth irresistible adventure for Colonial Egypt's the Mamur Zapt is fresh, funny, and "Still as fertile as your favourite oasis." Inevitably, as the tide of Nationalism sweeps the British Protectorate towards the realities of the dawning Twentieth Century, New Egypt is eroding the ways of the Old. But, as Gareth Owen, head of Cairo's Secret Police well knows, "The Old Egypt had a habit of rising up every so often and giving the New an almighty kick in the teeth."</P><P>It's called the Tree of the Virgin. It's a sycamore, actually, not the English sort but the Egyptian, a species of fig. The tree is a site of religious interest, said to be a spot where the Virgin Mary hid herself from Herod's soldiers in its branches. Or perhaps the Virgin and Child rested there on their flight into Egypt. Whatever, it's perilously close to the gash being cut for the new electric railway running out of Cairo to the New Helipolis being built in the suburbs. Sinister power groups are jostling for position, but who dumped the body of the humble villager on the track? Was it mere chance? Had the victim been caught up in a traditional revenge killing? Or did someone want to halt construction?</P><P>The Mamur Zapt, adept in picking his way through the local and national power structures, refers the removal of the body to committee. But, he has to ask, what is the significance of the Fig Tree? Does it matter that the caravans for Mecca gather only a mile or so away? And what of the ostrich that passed in the night?</P></div>

The Fig Tree Murder

<div><P>For millennia, Egypt has depended upon the waters of the Nile. Its annual floods fertilize the land. By the time Britain extends its dominion over Egypt, the Cairo Barrage is the key to control, its name taken from the French term meaning a dam or irrigation channel designed to increase a river's depth or to divert its flow.</P><P>An attempt to blow up the Manufiyah regulator in the Barrage is not a petty matter. Gareth Owen, The Mamur Zapt, Chief of Cairo's Secret Police, is hurriedly summoned. He hasn't a clue what a regulator is. Nor can he identify the mysterious Lizard Man who seems to have a grudge against the whole Egyptian irrigation system. But he does know that the ceremonial cutting of the temporary dam thrown up each year across the mouth of the Khalig Canal restarts the whole irrigation cycle, allowing water to pour through the canal and signal the opening of dams all across the land. The cut will require policing. Especially as it is going to be the last cut before the canal is filled in.</P><P>While this modernization will wipe out a health hazard, the Cairenes love the party that goes with the cut. They are less than happy with the dam. Things grow worse when a young woman's body is discovered at the site. Owen has to say it's extremely embarrassing. Is this the traditional ritual sacrifice? Or a sign of sabotage? A diversion? Or just plain murder?</P></div>

The Last Cut

<div><P>It's 1909, and Cairo is the murder capital of the world. Deaths are two a piastre. But the death of an effendi is something different. Effendis—the Egyptian elite—are important. Especially if they happen to be foreign.</P><P>When effendi Tvardovsky is shot at a gathering of financiers in Crocodilopolis, the ancient City of the Crocodiles, Mamur Zapt Gareth Owen—Chief of Cairo's Secret Police—is called in to investigate. In some countries, if someone goes for a walk or a boat ride with the Head of the Secret Police and doesn't come back, it's best not to ask any questions. And there are powerful people who might prefer Tvardovsky dead.</P><P>There are still crocodiles—of all kinds—in Egypt. And when the crocodiles start cooperating, it's time to really watch out....</P></div>

Death of an Effendi

<div><P>The world is changing around the Mamur Zapt, British Chief of Cairo's Secret Police. It's 1912 and there's a war on that no one's heard of. When an Italian man is murdered in the city's back streets, there is concern that this could be some kind of ethnic cleansing. "One of us" Morelli may have been, but was he "one of us" enough? And were the guns in his warehouse anything to do with it? Gareth Owen - the Mamur Zapt - has to find out fast.</P><P>And then, as external pressures crowd in, other difficult questions arise. What is Trudi von Ramsberg really doing in Cairo? Not to mention that other noted traveller, Gertrude Bell, or the irritating little archaeologist, T.E. Lawrence? And why has the post of Khedive's Librarian suddenly become so important?</P><P>As Cromer's Egypt gives way to Kitchener's Egypt, Morelli is not the only one who has problems over where his allegiance lies. Maybe the solution is for Owen to go to Zanzibar....</P></div>

A Cold Touch of Ice

<div><P>Egypt, 1914. The outbreak of war in Europe casts ripples even in Cairo. Gareth Owen, Mamur Zapt and Head of the Khedive's Secret Police, is given the task of rounding up enemy aliens. But determining who counts as a German proves contentious.</P><P>And then there's the face in the cemetery. Who disturbed the mummified remains of cats by placing a human corpse among them? Is the villagers' talk of a mysterious Cat Woman mere superstitious nonsense, or something rather sinister?</P><P>Owen has more pressing concerns in the shape of missing rifles and dubious gun-toting ghaffirs or watchmen. But the face in the cemetery refuses to go away, and Owen comes to realize that it poses questions that are not just professional but uncomfortably personal.</P></div>

Michael Pearce
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Books By Michael Pearce (15 Books)