The Girl in the Nile (Mamur Zapt Mysteries, 5) - Softcover

Pearce, Michael

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1590580532 ISBN 13: 9781590580530

Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press, 2011

Synopsis

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....

About this title

About the Author

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.

From Kirkus Reviews

Called away from a routine arms search to examine the corpse of a young woman who's fallen from a pleasure boat moored in the Nile, Gareth Cadwallader Owen, the Mamur Zapt of 1909 Cairo (The Mamur Zapt and the Men Behind, 1993, etc.), finds that the body has already disappeared. The boat's owner, minor royal scion Prince Narouz, disclaims any knowledge of the victim's identity--she was just a party girl invited to supplement his harem, he blandly assures Owen--and nobody can explain who she was or why she would have fallen from a stationary boat in a calm river. Starting with a few trivial details about the dead woman's costume, though, Owen is able to find out that she was the clinging companion first of an influential journalist and then of a rising sculptor before Narouz met her at the opening-night party for a new play. This alarms his superiors, who are afraid his investigation will interfere with an all-important agreement ever-pending between Narouz's father and the occupying British. This, in turn, infuriates his mistress, Zeinab, who thinks he's going to soft-pedal the investigation. By the time the corpse resurfaces--this time in a most embarrassing place--Owen is almost ready to hide it again himself. Pearce's pace is as deliberate and gravely amused as ever, but his uncharacteristic focus on a central mystery comes at a high price: Lacking the local color of Owen's four earlier adventures, this one is his least distinctively charming and amusing to date. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 1590580532
• ISBN 13: 9781590580530
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 240