The Last Cut: A Mamur Zapt Mystery: 11 (Mamur Zapt Mysteries) - Softcover

Pearce, Michael

3.89

89 ratings by Goodreads

9781590581766: The Last Cut: A Mamur Zapt Mystery: 11 (Mamur Zapt Mysteries)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1590581768 ISBN 13: 9781590581766

Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press, 2013

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Praise for The Last Cut... "Oh, this is just a fine novel....With great and gentle humour, excellent dialogue and a twisty plot...Pearce enthralls and entertains us....Great story, marvelously executed." -Carl Brookins, author of the Michael Tanner mysteries For millennia, Egypt has depended upon the waters of the Nile to flood and fertilize the land. A barrage or dam-like structure several miles above Cairo controls the flow of water to southern Egypt through a series of regulators. Now, someone has attempted to blow up one of them. Damaging a regulator is not a petty matter, so Gareth Owen, the Mamur Zapt, Chief of Cairo's Secret Police, is hurriedly summoned. He hasn't a clue what a regulator is. Nor can he identify the mysterious Lizard Man who seems to have a grudge against the whole Egyptian irrigation system. But he knows that the ceremonial cutting of the temporary dam thrown up each year across the mouth of the Khalig Canal restarts the whole irrigation cycle and is cause for great celebration. He also knows that this will be the last cut before the canal is filled in and a modern tramway built over it. It's a plan many Cairenes do not support. Then a young woman's body is discovered in the dry canal. Is this the traditional ritual sacrifice? A sign of sabotage? A diversion? Or just plain murder? Michael Pearce was raised in Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. He trained as a Russian interpreter but later moved to an academic career. He now lives in London and is best known as the author of the award-winning Mamur Zapt books.

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Review:

"Witty, intelligent, and charming, Pearce's Mamur Zapt series never fails to please. In the latest installment, the delightful Gareth Owen, Mamur Zapt (chief of the secret police) of Cairo, is called in when one of the city's main dams is sabotaged with a well-placed bomb. It's urgent to find out what happened, since the bombing occurs on the eve of the Cut, a quasi-pagan celebration during which the waters of the Nile are released to irrigate the crops. If the dam is destroyed, the celebration will be a catastrophe. Adding to Owen's worries is the body of a young woman, which has been left on the spot used in past centuries to sacrifice a maiden during the Cut. Now, what with bombings and dead maidens, the locals are worried that the gods are trying to tell them something. Are the tragedies the work of the mythic and mysterious Lizard Man? Owen knows Lizard Man isn't real, but if he doesn't find a logical explanation, panic could rage through Cairo's normally peaceful streets. A gentle gem of a book." --Booklist

"Pearce takes apart ancient history and reassembles it with beguiling wit and colour." -- Sunday Times

"Urbane, intelligent and never patronising, Pearce writes about Egypt with the observant eye of the lover who sees yet forgives all faults." -- Val McDermid

aPearce takes apart ancient history and reassembles it with beguiling wit and colour.aaSunday Times

aUrbane, intelligent and never patronising, Pearce writes about Egypt with the observant eye of the lover who sees yet forgives all faults.a aVal McDermid

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