The mystery plots in Michael Pearce's series are about average. What I find most enjoyable about these books is the wonderful setting and colorful characters with which he's peopled it...Cairo of 1910: the corrupt and bankrupt Ottoman government of the Khedive of Egypt and Sudan; the British Advisors and soldiers who occupy the country in fact, if not on paper; the Nationalist population drawing from the ranks of the city folk and fellahin. Pearce was raised in Anglo-Egyptian Sudan and these books have a wonderfully authentic air to them, full of the sights and sounds of the city.

In this volume, Captain Owen—British occupier of the post of Mamur Zapt, Head of Cairo's Secret Police...i.e., charged by Britain to keep political matters from getting out of control—has to figure out how the suicide of a minor civil servant, some unknown person cheating citizens out of their inheritances and something going on at the Agricultural Bank all fit together. All told with the dry humor I've come to expect from Pearce. ( )