Review of City of Jackals by Parker Bilal

The fifth instalment of the Makana series set in Egypt. Makana, private investigator and Sudanese refugee in Cairo, has been hired to find Mourad Hafiz, an idealistic student who seems to have dropped out of university. He’s working for the police to try and help uncover the mystery behind two fellow countrymen found murdered. While the student’s disappearance seems like it might be connected to political activity, what lies behind the two deaths is murky. Both cases though lead to a Christian church in the slums which helps refugees fleeing from war in Sudan, a protest camp that is seeking recognition and better treatment, and a pharmacy group and medical institute. Quite how they are all connected is not clear and no-one is keen to share information, though they’re clearly on edge. Adding uncertainty to Makana’s investigation is a shift in his relationship with a pathologist, who may or may not be making romantic overtures. The latter creates a nice shift in character development in the series. As with the other books, there is a strong sense of place and culture, and social commentary concerning family, work and politics. Indeed, Bilal does a good job balancing the mystery elements with observations about the political regime and Sudanese refugees in Egypt. The reason behind the case was somewhat telegraphed, but that little affected the enjoyment of the unfolding plot. However, the denouement did feel somewhat staged and rushed. Overall, another strong addition to a very good series.

Review of The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje (1992, Bloomsbury)

Italy, 1945. Four people live in a dilapidated nunnery near to Florence as the war draws to a close: Hana, a young, exhausted Canadian nurse; a mysterious, anonymous, English man burned beyond recognition in a plane crash in the Sahara; Caravaggio, a thief/spy who was a friend of Hana’s father who has had his thumbs amputated by the retreating Nazis; and Kip, a Sikh sapper who specialises in bomb disposal whose brother is in jail for being an Indian nationalist. Each is damaged is someway, trying to come to terms with the devastation of the war, the loss of loved ones, and their place in the world. Cut-off from the world they form a set of simmering relationships as each probes the others’ lives. Caravaggio is particularly taken with the English patient’s identity, and Kip and Hana conduct a low-key love affair. Their isolated summer must come to an end at some point, but not before some truths are revealed. Ondaatje tells their story through a fractured narrative of short encounters, shot through with flashbacks to earlier periods. This episodic structure means the story moves forward in quite a stilted way, slowly gaining shape as the various pieces are revealed. There’s no strong narrative arc, and by no means is it a page turner. Rather it is about human nature, relationships, identity and the casualties of war, and creating an affective response aided by poetic prose and a strong sense of place. An interesting, thoughtful, meandering read.

Review of The Burning Gates by Parker Bilal (Bloomsbury, 2015)

Cairo, 2004. Former Sudanese detective, now political refugee and private investigator, Makana is asked by the city’s leading art dealer to explore rumours that a famous painting, that disappeared from Kuwait in the first Gulf war, is hidden nearby. The suspicion is that the painting was smuggled into the country by an Iraqi colonel wanted for war crimes. Makana’s probing soon leads to encounters with two mysterious Americans, a corrupt former police officer, and a powerful pair of local gangsters, and to the vicious death of the art dealer. With the demise of his employer Makana could step away from the case, but his need to practice justice, plus a request from a local police detective, compels him to search for the art dealer’s murderer and the fabled painting and its thief. Which means navigating a perilous route between competing interests.

The Burning Gates is the fourth instalment of the Makana private investigator series set in Cairo. In this outing, Makana starts out exploring rumours that a famous painting looted in the first Gulf War is in the city, along with the Iraqi war criminal who plunderer it and other treasures. However, he’s soon in the crossfire of six competing interests, including a pair of local gangsters, a team of US mercenaries, an American cop, a corrupt former cop, the local police, and the elusive Iraqi colonel. Bilal nicely interweaves the strands to create a compelling thriller that manages to remain mostly grounded in possibilities rather than straying into fantastical plot devices as many thrillers do, with Makana tracing the various threads and reveals to a nice denouement. As with the other stories in the series, the real strengths of the tale are the reflective and stoic lead character, his coterie of helpers – his driver, newspaper connection, local cop – the strong sense of place, and the contextualisation with respect to contemporary Egyptian culture and politics. The result is an engaging and entertaining read that nicely blends a classic PI trope with political thriller.

Review of The Ghost Runner by Parker Bilal (2014, Bloomsbury)

It is 2002 and the effects of 9/11 are being felt across the Middle East as the global war of terror unfolds.  Musab, a former low ranking jihadist and political exile, is lifted from a street in Denmark and renditioned back to Egypt.  After a few months he escapes and disappears.  Makana, a former detective inspector in Sudan and now private investigator in Cairo, has been hired by a suspicious wife to track her husband.  The only woman the lawyer visits is a young girl in a private clinic that dies shortly after.  It turns out that the girl is Musab’s daughter, apparently burned to death in an honour killing.  An old family friend, the lawyer had been helping her and he now asks Makana to track down Musab.  The trail leads to Siwa, a small, isolated desert town from which Musab had fled many years earlier.  Makana arrives shortly after the death of a local magistrate and is enrolled to help in the investigation by the local police sergeant.  The town is full of dark secrets, but finding answers and justice proves difficult when no-one wants to discuss the past and its role in the terror stalking its streets.

The Ghost Runner is the third instalment of the Makana series set in Egypt.  In this outing Makana investigates the murder of a young girl, suspecting her former terrorist father of committing an honour killing.  Travelling to a small town in the desert he tries to piece together the family history and pick up the trail of the father.  His arrival coincides with a series of deaths and it is clear that the legacy of an event many years earlier is unfolding.  The Makana series has a number of appealing strengths that are once again evident in The Ghost Runner, such as its atmospheric sense of place, its contextualisation within Eygpt’s politics and history, and its well-drawn characters.  In particular, Makana is a detective worth spending time with – a clever, taciturn man haunted by the loss of his family in his flight from Sudan who is quietly patient and persistent.  As with the first two books, the tale extends well beyond a straight forward murder investigation, with Parker embedding the story within a wider narrative of local, national and international politics, and exploring themes of family, gender, honour, corruption and terrorism.  As such, there’s an awful lot going on, though it never feels rushed or confused, and indeed the tale sagged a little bit in the middle as Makana makes little progress, before picking up in the last third as the tension and body count rises.  It’s fair to say that there were quite a few plot devices used to make the whole thing hang together and the two denouements were somewhat contrived.  Nonetheless The Ghost Runner is an absorbing read.

Review of Dogstar Rising by Parker Bilal (Bloomsbury, 2013)

A former policeman in Sudan, Makana fled in 1991 settling in Cairo.  A decade later he is working as a private investigator and is hired by a struggling travel agent to determine the provenance of a threatening letter.  There's tension in the area in which the agency is located: young boys are turning up dead, with a local Muslim leader using the murders to stoke up sectarian violence against the much smaller Christian Coptic community.  Makana soon determines that all is not well with the travel agency’s accounts and there is more to the letter than initially thought.  Then an employee is murdered, with Makana the only witness, and the police and state security services vie for control of the case.  As the tension continues to rise, Makana tries to solve both the travel agency puzzle and that of the murdered boys, all the time placing himself in more and more danger.

In this second outing for Makana, a refugee cop turned PI from Sudan, Parker Bilal tackles Christian/Muslim sectarianism, rising Islamic radicalism, and state security corruption in Egypt pre-9/11 head on, whilst keeping the mystery element of the story at its core.  Dogstar Rising then is very much a religious/political crime thriller but one played out by relatively minor players in the everyday life of the city.  That is, it’s not a political Thriller with a big T.  While the case relating to the murdered children adds tension, it is the thread concerning the workings of a dysfunctional travel agency that is most interesting and takes a different path to those well worn by crime fiction tropes.  Bilal does a good job of placing the reader into urban and social landscapes of Cairo and in particular its political and religious tensions.  The characterisation is nicely observed, in particular the stoic Makana, who often places justice ahead of his own interests.  Overall, an engaging read.