Michael Pearce - The Fig Tree MurderHarpercollins - £14.99
This is the tenth Mamur Zapt mystery set in the Egypt of the early nineteen hundreds, A body is found on a railway line, Work on the construction of the line is suspended while rival factions wrangle over the body. One says it cannot be moved, another demands its urgent removal, while the family of the dead man seeks revenge. Also involved is a sacred Tree which has been given by the Khedive to the Empress Eugenie and so brings in the French end raises the ire of' the Egyptian religious faithful who question the Khedive's right to give the Tree away.
It is a mess, in the view of one of the characters, and in the middle stands Captain Gareth Owen, the mamur zapt, His position, as Head of the Khedive's Secret Police, goes back centuries, but he is now the right-hand man not of the Khedive but of the British, the real rulers of Egypt. The death on the line is not really his concern, but he is involved nevertheless end must steer a patient and careful path between the many rival factions, He menages this with sympathy and understanding, but has to resort to the threat of force on one occasion to assert his authority, He is en interesting and pleasant man, able to mix with the high and the low in the class-ridden society of the Egypt of the day.
Michael Pearce grew up in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, as it then was, and knows and understands the various tensions of the period. The detail necessary for the understanding of the modern reader is conveyed without being obtrusive, as for example when one of the labourers mentions the curbash, the heavy whip of the Pashas which was abolished by the British. The labourers seem uncertain whether its abolition was a good thing; the poor are still oppressed, no matter who is in charge.
The Fig Tree Murder is often very funny. Indeed the sixth novel in the series - The Mamur Zapt and the Spoils of Egypt - won the CWA's prestigious Last Laugh Award for the funniest crime novel of the year, The humour is such that the author can even jokingly have one of his characters foretell, accurately, the future, to the disbelief of his hearers, including the mamur zapt. But Captain Owen is not meant to be infallible and rightly so.
JOHN BOYLES
