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.Easily navigating multiple n...

Witty and irreverent, this is the first in an irresistible crime series set in Tsarist Russia in the 1890s from the award-winning Michael Pearce.Tsarist Russia in the 1890s. Dmitri Kameron, a young lawyer, must deal with the disappearance of a well-connected young woman. She has been shipped off to Siberia, in one of the prison wagons outside the Court House. But is this a bureaucratic bungle or something more calculated?On a journey to the furthest outposts of Russia, Dimi...

'Sheer fun' The TimesTrieste in 1906 is of vital strategic importance and one of the world's greatest seaports. But assorted nationalist movements are threatening to pull the place apart and the militarist regime has trouble keeping a lid on things.Amid all the chaos the British consul goes missing, and Special Branch Seymour is sent to find him. Born to an immigrant family in London's East End, Seymour has an acute linguistic ear - crucial in turn...

The third exciting crime thriller in Michael Pearces Dead Man series.Why is Seymour of Scotland Yard summoned to somewhere so exotic as North Africa? Isn't the death of a Frenchman there something for the local police? Well, yes and no. The local police are answerable to the International Committee, of which the chairman is the British Consul. So naturally the ensuing investigation has to be above board. And so Seymour is bought in as he has had experience...

Barcelona, 1912. A city still recovering from the dramatic incidents of the so-called 'Tragic Week' when Catalonian conscripts bound for the unpopular war in Spanish Morocco had rebelled at the city's dockside against the royalist forces. In the fighting, many were killed, and afterwards, even more put in prison. Including an Englishman, who was later found dead in his cell.The dead man had been a prominent businessman in Gibraltar, so what had he been doing in Barcelona? What part...

Athens, 1913, the capital of a country on the brink of war. The new Greek prime minister, Venizelos, tired of the Ottoman overlords, has what he calls the Great Idea - a vision of a new Greece that unites all the Greek people scattered around the Mediterranean. Not such a great idea, in the view of other countries, among them Britain, which believes in letting sleeping dogs lie. And cats. Including the one recently poisoned in Athens and which belonged to the exiled former Sultan.U...

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 accou...

"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 to...

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 ...

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.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?Owen...

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 ...

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 uncomfortab...