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Overview: Michael Pearce grew up in the (then) Anglo-Egyptian Sudan among the political and other tensions he draws on for his books. He returned there later to teach and retains a human rights interest in the area. His career has followed the standard academic rake’s progress from teaching to writing to administration. He finds international politics a pallid imitation of academic ones.
The Mamur Zapt Mysteries are set in Anglo-Egypt / Sudan in the early 1900s. Rather than being a specific person, "Mamur Zapt" was the official title of the head of Cairo’s CID in the heyday of (the indirect) British rule, focusing on political, not police, matters. With the bustling new century, the loosening of imperial ties, and the rise of nationalism, his is a busy office.
Genre: Fiction > Mystery/Thriller
1 – The Mamur Zapt and the Return of the Carpet
Set in 1908 Cairo, this colorful mystery debut vividly portrays life in the polyglot, multicultural city ostensibly ruled by a nearly bankrupt Khedive but actually governed by the British. Captain Gareth Owen, the Mamur Zapt (head of the secret police), investigates the attempted murder of prominent politician and philanderer Nuri Pasha. Ostensibly the target of revenge by an enraged relative of his newest conquest, the attack on Pasha takes on different dimensions when the weapon turns out to have been stolen from the British Army. A case of grenades also is missing, leading Owen to fear that a terrorist organization is planning something special for a forthcoming religious ceremony marking the return of the Holy Carpet from Mecca. As Owen begins a complex friendship with the Egyptian civilian investigator, Mahmoud el Zaki, the two explore the higher and lower reaches of the city, eventually uncovering a plot to assassinate a top British official. His work highly praised in England, Pearce depicts the intricate politics and social mores among the various Egyptian societies and factions to provide authentic background for an outstandingly well-wrought and satisfying mystery.
2 – The Night of the Dog
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–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 MP 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, which was not what her uncle had in mind. 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? Michael Pearce, continues to chart Owen’s fortunes with his trademark sly humor and relish for the oddities of Egyptian life.
3 – The Donkey-Vous
Tourists are quite safe provided they don’t do anything stupidly reckless,” so Captain Owen, the Mamur Zapt, Head of Cairo’s Political CID under British Rule, assures the press. But what of Monsieur Moulin, kidnapped from taking tea on the terrace at Shepheard’s Hotel? How has Mr. Colthorpe Hartley also disappeared. No one has actually seen 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 from than the donkey-vous beneath the terrace, home of Cairo’s humble but enterprising youths who hire out their donkeys for photographs and rides…
4 – The Men Behind
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 and Cromer to local rule. But can Owen discount more mundane agendas?
5 – The Girl in the Nile
1909 Egypt. It’s easy to go adrift in the complex political currents swirling through a country long "advised" by the British after the mess it made of its finances, but swelling with nationalism. Still, you can’t discount the self-interest of the Khedive, the Royal Family, and 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 definitely lost overboard, was 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.
6 – The Mamur Zapt and the Spoils of Egypt
"Accident? That was no accident!" exclaimed Miss Skinner. "I was pushed… I know a push when I feel one." In fact, the outspoken Miss Skinner has barely escaped falling under a Cairo tram. Captain Owen, as Mamur Zapt – head of British-ruled Cairo’s secret police – has been asked to keep an eye on the Boston-bred lady. Though affable, she is one of those people who seems to be everywhere at once.At first, Owen thinks little of her "accident." Miss Skinner, he surmises, was probably nudged by a fat-tailed Passover sheep – not an uncommon occurrence in Edwardian Cairo. However, he is soon convinced that something more sinister – and more cunning – is at work.Trying to keep the incorrigible Miss Skinner safe proves a deadly task for Captain Owen; almost as dangerous as trying to placate his Egyptian mistress, the fiercely independent Zeinab. As Owen trails Miss Skinner to exotic excavation sites, he encounters a frightening series of baffling deaths. Now the Mamur Zapt must ponder two mysteries: how to propose marriage to Zeinab without losing face, and how to separate archaeology from plunder… without losing his life.
7 – The Camel of Destruction
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. 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, 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.
8 – The Snake Catcher’s Daughter
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 in the uncomfortable position of possible divided loyalties, but bringing him under her own stern scrutiny.
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 loosing the plague of Egypt?
The Snake Catcher’s Daughter is the eighth in the award-winning Mamur Zapt series highly praised for its elegance, wry wit, telling period detail, and political astuteness.
9 – The Mingrelian Conspiracy
In the Cairo of 1908, the city lives–and dies–by its cafi culture. But for all restaurant businesses, then and now, the protection rackets pose a problem. And the city’s cafis are experiencing a sudden upsurge in threats from various gangs. But who are they? More importantly, who’s behind them? Is the money being channeled to some big crook, or is its use political, say for the purchase of guns? With some sixty nationalities, one hundred and twelve ethnic groups, and over two hundred religious sects, not to mention the Nationalists on the rise, policing the capital is no easy matter. When Mustapha, one cafi proprietor, is attacked by men with clubs, his legs broken for non- compliance, everyone is worried. The attacks may be escalating towards the international community. The Russian Chargi makes a complaint. Are the Mingrelians, a very small Christian group from the Caucasus, formenting a real conspiracy aimed at the visit of a Russian Grand Duke? This royalty is coming to replicate the visit his uncle paid to Egypt at the opening of the Suez Canal. Heading off any such incident is the task of Gareth Owen, Head of the Secret Police. But will the Mamur Zapt find answers to so many arcane questions in time?…
10 – The Fig Tree Murder
Why was the body put on the line? Chance? Or did someone want to halt the progress of the new electric railway out fom Cairo to the City of Pleasure being built in the suburbs? Was it another of Egypt’s traditional revenge killings? Or had the murdered man somehow got caught up in the manoeuvrings of the sinister power groups jostling for position around the new railway? In this, the tenth novel in Michael Pearce’s award-winning series, Old Egypt is pitted against New and in the middle is the Mamur Zapt. To answer these questions he has to look both in the luxurious quarters of the dazzling New Heliopolis and in the more humble houses of the dead man’s village, and in neither place are things as straightforward as they seem. What is the significance of the tree of the Virgin? Does it matter that the gathering place for the Mecca caravan is only a mile or two away? And what of the ostrich that passed in the night?
11 – The Last Cut
For millennia, Egypt has depended upon the waters of the Nile. Its annual floods fertilize the land. By the time the British control 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 flow. An attempt to blow up the Manufiyah regulator in the Barrage is not a petty matter. Gareth Owen, the 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 damn 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.
While this modernization will wipe out a health hazard, the Cairenes love the party that goes with the Cut. They are less than happy. 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?
12 – Death of an Effendi
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.
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.
There are still crocodiles—of all kinds—in Egypt. And when the crocodiles start cooperating, it’s time to really watch out!
13 – A Cold Touch of Ice
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.
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…
14 – The Face in the Cemetery
A classic murder mystery from Michael Pearce’s award-winning series, set in Egypt in the 1900s, in which the Mamur Zapt confronts the secrets of his past. It is the beginning of the war and the Mamur Zapt, Gareth Owen, British head of Cairo’s secret police, is called in to investigate a human corpse abandoned in a cat cemetery. Is the villagers’ talk of a mysterious Cat Woman mere superstitious nonsense, or something rather sinister? The Mamur Zapt is preoccupied with missing guns and dubious ghaffirs, but the face in the cemetery refuses to go away. And Owen comes to realise that it poses questions that are not just professional but uncomfortably personal…
15 – The Point in the Market
It’s World War I. Britain’s shadow government, headed by its Agent and Consul General under the nominal authority of Egypt’s hereditary ruler the Khedive, has ruled Egypt since 1881. 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. Their union comes with serious consequences for both of them and is 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….
16 – The Mark of the Pasha
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.
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.
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 first order of business is to ward them off. The second is to ensure the safety of an impending major…
17 – The Bride Box
Cairo, 1912. The Pasha receives an unexpected gift: a traditional Bride Box. When opened, however, the box contains an unwelcome jolt from the past . . . At the same time, a little girl is discovered riding under a train from Luxor – and the Mamur Zapt, Head of the Khedive’s Secret Police, is called in to investigate.
He soon finds himself confronting a political storm as the end of British rule approaches and his investigations uncover a tangled web of family loyalties and betrayals, with its roots in a slave trade long supposed to have been stamped out in Egypt.
18 – The Mouth of the Crocodile
Atbara, Sudan, 1913. A dead man is fished out of the River Nile. An accident – or something more sinister? A visiting Pasha from the Royal Household believes it was murder – and that he himself was the intended target. He insists that the Mamur Zapt, Head of the Khedive’s Secret Police, escorts him on his return train journey to Cairo, for protection. It’s to be an eventful voyage. Matters take an unexpected turn when the train is stranded in the desert following a sandstorm. With the help of English schoolboy Jamie Nicholson, the Mamur Zapt pursues his investigations, convinced that at least one of his fellow passengers has a secret to hide. And what was the Pasha really doing in that remote corner of the Sudan? Could the Mamur Zapt’s deepest fears be true? Could he really be about…
19 – The Women of the Souk
The kidnapping of an innocent schoolgirl throws a glaring light on the tensions and injustices of pre-War Egyptian society in this absorbing historical mystery.
Cairo, Egypt, 1913. When schoolgirl Marie Kewfik is kidnapped, snatched away as she strolled through the bustling bazaars of the Souk, the Khedive insists that the Mamur Zapt, Head of the Secret Police, takes charge of the negotiations for her safe return. The Kewfiks are one of the wealthiest and most powerful families in Egypt but, as the Mamur Zapt discovers, not everyone thinks it’s worth the trouble to secure the release of a mere girl. He also learns that there is more to Marie’s kidnapping than meets the eye – and the subsequent fallout will shine a glaring light on the dangerous tensions running through Egyptian society.
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