Maxima Library

The Mamur Zapt, head of Cairo's CID in the heyday of (the indirect) British rule, focuses on political, not police, matters. With the bustling new century, the loosening of imperial ties, and the rise of nationalism, his is a busy office. The attempted assassination of a veteran politician raises the spectre of a major terrorist statement at the capital's principal religious festival where the faithful celebrate the Return of the Holy Carpet from Mecca. Easily navigating multiple nationalities, Captain Owen, the Welsh incumbent, bolsters the Mamur Zapt's office with the aid of a host of memorable characters.

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. It is not a welcome time for a command that Captain Owen, the Mamur Zapt, show the niece of an inspecting English MP the sights. Worse, the sights include a dancing dervish stabbed before the lady’s very eyes. Is this all part of a pattern that could lead to blood on the streets and set Cairo’s ethnic communities at each other’s throats?

"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 also disappeared. No one has actually seen either victim vanish.... Are these ordinary crimes? Are they intended as deliberately symbolic blows at the British? Or are they just a means of discouraging tourism? Owen had better unravel it quickly, or else... And where better to start from than the donkey-vous beneath the terrace, home of Cairo's humble but enterprising youths who hire out their donkeys for photographs and rides...
Follow the Mamur Zapt's career through The Mamur Zapt and the Return of the Carpet and The Night of the Dog, both republished by Poisoned Pen Press.

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 the Mamur Zapt himself? He may be the British head of the city's Secret Police, but is he above suspicion? After all, he does have an Egyptian mistress, placing him not only in the uncomfortable position of possible divided loyalties, but bringing him under her own stern scrutiny.
Owen's attempts to get answers and avoid political (and personal) embarrassment take him into uncharted territory, the world of Cairo's female rites. And more terrifyingly, into one of Egypt's traditional crafts. Snake catching. How do you milk a cobra? Do snakes have ears? Can they be tamed? Can a mere woman fill the traditional role of snake catcher without the undying opposition of the Rifa'i--and without loosing the plague of Egypt?

The Snake Catcher's Daughter is the eighth in the award-winning Mamur Zapt series highly praised for its elegance, wry wit, telling period detail, and political astuteness.

Cairo, 1912. The Pasha receives an unexpected gift: a traditional Bride Box. When opened, however, the box contains an unwelcome jolt from the past – one which connects with practices long thought dead. At the same time, a little girl is discovered riding under a train from Luxor – and the Mamur Zapt, Head of the Khedive’s Secret Police, is called in to investigate.
 
An Englishman squeezed between the demands of a world about to disappear and the emerging needs of a world about to come, the Mamur Zapt, finds himself confronting a political storm as the end of British rule approaches and his investigations uncover a tangled web of family loyalties and betrayals, with its roots in a slave trade long supposed to have been stamped out in Egypt.