In this classic murder mystery from Michael Pearces award-winning series, set in the Egypt of the 1900s, the Mamur Zapt investigates the murder of an Italian man in the backstreets of Cairo.The world is changing around the Mamur Zapt, British Chief of Cairos Secret Police. Its 1912 and theres a war on that no ones ever heard of. A man is killed. Is this an attempt at or the beginning, perhaps of some kind of ethnic cleansing One of us Morelli may have been, but was he one of us enough And were the guns in his warehouse anything to do with it Gareth Owen the Mamur Zapt has to find out fast.And then, as external pressures crowd in, there are other difficult questions. What is Trudi von Ramsberg really doing in Cairo Not to mention that other noted traveller, Gertrude Bell, or the irritating little archaeologist, T. E. Lawrence And why has the post of Khedives Librarian suddenly become so importantOwen is just the man to solve these problems. He is less successful, though, with his relationship to Zeinab, especially now that shes approaching thirty.As Cromers Egypt gives way to Kitcheners Egypt, Morelli is not the only one who has problems over where his allegiance lies. Maybe the solution is for Owen to go to Zanzibar