Description:

1909 Egypt. It's easy to go adrift in the complex political currents swirling through a country long "advised" by the British after the mess it made of its finances, but swelling with nationalism. Still, you can't discount the self-interest of the Khedive, the Royal Family, and the country's pashas. Nevertheless, Captain Gareth Owen, Head of the Cairo Secret Police, has to ask, "Where's the body?" The girl, perhaps a woman of ill repute but definitely lost overboard, was glimpsed lying on a sandbank in the Nile. Then she vanished. Why had Prince Narouz hired the dahabeeyah? Surely not just to cruise to Luxor--the man has no interest in antiquities. And why was Miss Sekhmet on the boat anyway? Was it for the Prince's pleasure, or to embarrass him? Under heavy pressure from politicos and his own mistress, the strong-minded Zeinab, Owen steers a difficult course after a murderer....

From Publishers Weekly

The fifth case (after The Mamur Zapt and the Men Behind) for Captain Garth Owen, head of the British police force in Cairo in the first decade of the 20th century, is less exciting than its volatile setting suggests. Investigating the death of a woman who falls from the pleasure boat of Prince Narouz, Owen, as Mamur Zapt, follows a trail through a thicket of foreign customs, language and touchy royalty. The woman's body is sighted in the water, then it disappears. Lazy officials are suspected of moving it out of their jurisdiction, but it's the royalty who raise the thorniest dilemmas. Owen is given mixed signals from his superiors, who want the case solved and the royals soothed, all at the same time. Less ambiguous in her wishes is Zeinab, Owen's Egyptian lover, who feels considerable sympathy with the free-spirited, unorthodox dead woman and wants her body found. Pearce delights in political and social detail, but he squanders the romantic suspense inherent in both his setting and the conflicts among his cast of characters. The repetitious uncertainties of stuffy British colonials are no substitute for real mystery and adventure.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Like the popular Amelia Peabody series, Pearce's Mamur Zapt stories combine the exotic ambience of nineteenth-century Egypt with intelligent writing, a sense of history, a keen wit, and a genuinely likable lead character. Captain Gareth Owen, head of Cairo's secret police, is faced with a difficult case that could be a political time bomb. The body of a young woman is found washed up on the banks of the Nile, but this isn't any ordinary victim. As Owen soon discovers, she's fallen off a dahabeeyah belonging to Prince Narouz, the probable heir to Egypt's throne. And when the girl's body is stolen from its burial tomb, Owen is quite sure that someone is trying to cover up evidence that will lead to the killer. But he must tread gingerly among the motley cast of characters--his outraged and outspoken mistress, who's withholding her favors until Owen solves the case; the Mamur Zapt's higher-ups; an annoyingly persistent and voluble policeman who's assigned to help Owen; the mysterious and elusive Prince Narouz; and a ragtag bunch of earnest but not always helpful informants. Good fun that will prove popular with Mamur Zapt fans and will win him a few more. Emily Melton