"Camels hiss, donkeys bray, market vendors argue, but the corpse has nothing to say....Owen sorts through the cacophonous political machinations and emerging women's issues to resolve [the] murder and the reasons for it. ...[A] wry, vivid picture of a country wrestling with changing values and a wavering national identity." -Kirkus Reviews It's World War I. Britain's shadow government, headed by its Agent and Consul General under the nominal authority of Egypt's hereditary ruler the Khedive, has ruled Egypt since 1881. 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 the personal side, Owen has married his longtime lover, the lovely Pasha's daughter, Zeinab. Their union comes with serious consequences for both of them and is riddled with political and social pitfalls. Neither can be fully accepted by the other's culture and community. Against this, the perils of the Great War pale.... "Pearce delivers another sizzling installment in his excellent Mamur Zapt series....[T]his intelligent whodunit shines as much for its cosmopolitan setting and characterizations as for its tautly woven plot." -Booklist Michael Pearce, the author of this fifteenth book in a remarkable series, is a former Anglo-Egyptian civil servant who grew up in the (then) Anglo-Egyptian Sudan among the political and other tensions he draws on for his books. He now lives and writes in England.