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...

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 Liber...

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...

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, ...

"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...

Malta, 1913, and hot air balloons hover over the Grand Harbour. One of them comes down in the water but no one is hurt - except that the balloonist dies later when taken into the Naval Hospital for a check-up. But he is not the only one who had died there unexpectedly, as a letter to The Times points out, and a special investigator, Seymour of the Foreign Office, is sent out from London to find out what is going on.For in 1913 Malta is still a British protectorate, governe...

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-own...

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."It...

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...

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...

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 ...

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...