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Much has been written about the ups and downs of financial markets, from the lure of prosperity to the despair of crises. Yet a more fundamental and pernicious source of uncertainty exists in today's world: the traditional "insurance" risks of earthquakes, storms, terrorist attacks, and other disast... More

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 O... More

Egypt, 1914. The outbreak of war in Europe casts ripples that can be felt even in Cairo. Gareth Owen, Mamur Zapt and Head of the Khedive’s Secret Police, is given the unhappy task of rounding up enemy aliens. But in a land where the adoption of foreign nationality is a popular means of avoiding tria... More

The Great War has ended, and the army is keen to be demobbed. But Willoughby, the new British High Commissioner in Egypt, has managed to affront the Khedive by refusing to receive rival delegations fueled by rising nationalism. Then, when some Armenians, Copts, and English civil servants are attacke... More

The world is changing around the Mamur Zapt, British Chief of Cairo’s Secret Police. It’s 1912 and there’s a war on that no one’s heard of. When an Italian man is murdered in the city’s back streets, there is concern that this could be some kind of ethnic cleansing. “One of us” Morelli may have been... More

For millennia, Egypt has depended upon the waters of the Nile. Its annual floods fertilize the land. By the time Britain extends its dominion over Egypt, the Cairo Barrage is the key to control, its name taken from the French term meaning a dam or irrigation channel designed to increase a river’s de... More

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 t... More

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 M... More

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 mer... More

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 t... More

In the Cairo of 1908, the city lives - and dies - by its cafe culture. But for all restaurant businesses, then and now, the protection rackets pose a problem. And the city's cafes are experiencing a sudden upsurge in threats from various gangs. But who are they? More importantly, who's behind them? ... More

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 w... More

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 Crocodilopol... More

"Tourists are quite safe provided they don't do anything stupidly reckless," so Captain Owen, the Mamur Zapt, Head of Cairo's Political CID under British Rule, assures the press. But what of Monsieur Moulin, kidnapped from taking tea on the terrace at Shepheard's Hotel? How has Mr. Colthorpe Hartley... More

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... More

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... More

Edwardian Egypt and archaeology go hand in hand, not just for the antiquarian but for the men, whether poor fellahin or rich merchant, who profit from the illegal export of antiquities. Captain Gareth Owen, the Mamur Zapt or head of Cairo’s Secret Police, turns his attention to the trade when Miss S... More

Black British Drama: A Transnational Story looks afresh at the ways black theatre in Britain is connected to and informed by the spaces of Africa, the Caribbean and the USA. Michael Pearce offers an exciting new approach to reading modern and contemporary black British drama, examining plays by a ra... More

The gift of a traditional Bride Box leads Mamur Zapt into a complex and intriuging investigationCairo, 1912. The Pasha receives an unexpected gift: a traditional Bride Box. When opened, however, the box contains an unwelcome jolt from the past . . . At the same time, a little girl is discovered ridi... More

Filled with real examples of the way people use English in different contexts, The Routledge Dictionary of English Language Studies is an indispensable guide to the richness and variety of the English language for both students and the general reader. From abbreviation to zero-article, via fricativ... More

First published in 1992, this volume recognises that it is not unusual, when practising librarianship, to come across small to medium collections within the library, which, because they are different from the main collection, are outside the librarian’s experience or are a new type of material not p... More

The third exciting crime thriller in Michael Pearces Dead Man series. Why is Seymour of Scotland Yard summoned to somewhere so exotic as North Africa? Isn't the death of a Frenchman there something for the local police? Well, yes and no. The local police are answerable to the International Committee... More

'Sheer fun' The TimesTrieste in 1906 is of vital strategic importance and one of the world's greatest seaports. But assorted nationalist movements are threatening to pull the place apart and the militarist regime has trouble keeping a lid on things. Amid all the chaos the British consul goes missing... More

From the author of the award-winning Mamur Zapt books, the second in a series introducing Seymour of Special Branch and set in the British embassies and Consulates of Europe in the early 1900s. The Second Secretary of the Embassy in Istanbul has died in decidedly strange circumstances while attempti... More

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 poin... More