The Face in the Cemetery - Tapa dura

‘Probably the best in a consistently entertaining series ... Pearce makes serious comedy out of living history. His touch remains light; his dialogue effervescent. His characters, though, have acquired painful substance. The fresco that he assembles kicks like a chorus line; but this time with feeling’ Philip Oakes, Literary Review

Acclaim for Michael Pearce and the Mamur Zapt novels:

‘For contrast and sheer entertainment, Michael Pearce’s A Cold Touch of Ice is one of the best in his Mamur Zapt series... As always, his characters and the city itself are full of life and the dialogue... is excellent. Highly recommended’ Susanna Yager, Sunday Telegraph

‘Pearce takes apart ancient history and reassembles it with beguiling wit and colour’ John Coleman, Sunday Times

‘Marvellously convoluted... Dryly and deeply funny’
Philip Oakes, Literary Review

A classic murder mystery from Michael Pearce’s award-winning series, set in Egypt in the 1900s, in which the Mamur Zapt confronts the secrets of his past.

It is the beginning of the war and the Mamur Zapt, Gareth Owen, British head of Cairo’s secret police, is called in to investigate a human corpse abandoned in a cat cemetery. Is the villagers’ talk of a mysterious Cat Woman mere superstitious nonsense, or something rather sinister?

The Mamur Zapt is preoccupied with missing guns and dubious ghaffirs, but the face in the cemetery refuses to go away. And Owen comes to realise that it poses questions that are not just professional but uncomfortably personal...