Mamur Zapt Books In Order

Publication Order of Mamur Zapt Books

Mamur Zapt Series by Michael Pearce
Author Michael Pearce pens the “Mamur Zapt” series of historical mystery novels. The series began publication in the year 1988, when “The Mamur Zapt and the Return of the Carpet” was released.

The series is set in Cairo right at the turn of the twentieth century. Egypt was ruled notionally by a Khedive however the British administered the country during this time. Rather than a specific person, “Mamur Zapt” was the head of the Cairo secret police’s head. Michael Pearce filled this role with a Welsh army captain named Gareth Cadwallader Owen.

“The Mamur Zapt and the Return of the Carpet” is the first novel in the “Mamur Zapt” series and was released in the year 1988. The head of Cairo’s CID (The Mamur Zapt) in the heyday of (the indirect) British rule, focuses not on the police but political matters. With the bustling new century, the loosening of the imperial ties, as well as the rise of nationalism, his office is a busy one.

The attempted assassination of one veteran politician raises up the spectre of a major terrorist statement at the capital’s principal religious festival where all the faithful celebrate the Return of the Holy Carpet from Mecca. Easily navigating multiple nationalities, the Welsh incumbent (Captain Owen) bolsters the Mamur Zapt’s office with the help of some memorable characters.

“The Men Behind” is the fourth novel in the “Mamur Zapt” series and was released in the year 1991. While Fairclough of Customs rides home for lunch on his donkey, he is rather rudely unseated by some shots fired from behind him. The incident is just the first in a chain of attacks that are apparently aimed at public officials. Even Captain Owen, the Mamur Zapt, is barely able to escape. Could a sinister campaign to undermine the foreign rule be underway? Just who are “the men behind”?

True the Nationalist movement rises after three decades of the British Protectorate, and the new Liberal Government in the city of London is more sympathetic than those heavy-handed Conservatives and Cromer to local rule. However, can Owen even discount more mundane agendas?

Under orders to act fast, he dives into the maneueverings at the Khedive’s court as well as the goals of a commercial delegation. His investigations don’t just carry him into the student quarter of the city but also out into the countryside and onto a rural estate.

Along the way, he also juggles a bomb-wielding Berber, a Pasha whose political star has faded, and Soraya (the knife happy gypsy) who totally annoys Owen’s main girl, Zeinab (the lovely and fierce). She herself is also the daughter of a pasha. Which of these volatile combinations is the most likely to prove injurious to Mamur Zapt and the government that he serves?

“The Snake Catcher’s Daughter” is the eighth novel in the “Mamur Zapt” series and was released in the year 1994. Somebody’s running a campaign to discredit Cairo’s senior police officials. Could the Commandant, Garvin, be playing power games, or could he be trying to get to the bottom of the allegations of corruption?

What about McPhee, Garvin’s senior deputy and a guy that might finally be heading round the bend? What about the Mamur Zapt himself? He might be the British head of the city’s Secret Police, however is he above suspicion? After all, he is keeping an Egyptian mistress, which places him not just in the uncomfortable spot of potential divided loyalties but it also brings him under her own stern scrutiny.

Owen’s efforts to get answers and stay away from both personal and political embarrassment take him into some uncharted territory: the world of Cairo’s female rites. More terrifyingly, into one of the traditional crafts in Egypt. Snake catching. How does somebody even milk a cobra? Do snakes even have ears? And can they be tamed? Could a mere woman fill the traditional role as a snake catcher without the Rifa’i’s undying opposition and without letting loose the plague of Egypt?

“A Cold Touch of Ice” is the thirteenth novel in the “Mamur Zapt” series and was released in the year 2000. The world’s changing all around the Mamur Zapt, British Chief of the Secret Police in Cairo. The year is 1912 and there is a war going that nobody knows exists. An Italian man is killed in the back streets of the city, there is concern that this might be some sort of ethnic cleansing.

“One of us” Morelli might well have been, but could he really have been “one of us” enough? Were the guns found in his warehouse have anything at all to do with it? The Mamur Zapt, Gareth Owen, must find out fast.

Then, while external pressures crowd in on him, other tough questions come up. Why has the post of Khedive’s Librarian suddenly gotten so important? What’s Trudi von Ramsberg doing in Cairo, really? Not to mention the other notable traveler, Gertrude Bell, or that irritating small archaeologist, T. E. Lawrence?

While Cromer’s Egypt ends and Kitchener’s Egypt starts, Morelli isn’t the only one that has issues with where his allegiance lies. Possibly the solution is for Owen to head to Zanzibar.

“The Bride Box” is the seventeenth novel in the “Mamur Zapt” series and was released in the year 2013. Cairo in 1912. The Pasha has gotten one unexpected gift in the form of a traditional Bride Box. However, once it’s opened the box has an unwelcome jolt from the past, one that links practices believed to be long dead. Meanwhile, one little girl is found riding under this train from Luxor, and the Mamur Zapt, Head of the Khedive’s Secret Police, is called in to investigate.

An Englishman that is squeezed between a world about to vanish’s demands and the emerging needs of the world about to come, the Mamur Zapt, finds he is confronting a political storm while the end of British rule is approaching and his investigations reveal a tangled web of betrayals and family loyalties, with roots in a slave trade that is long supposed to have been shut down in Egypt.