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 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.

Review of The Golden Scales by Parker Bilal (Bloomsbury, 2012)

A former police inspector, Makana lives on a rickety house boat in Cairo having fled Sudan seven years previously, forced out by Islamic extremists who killed his wife and daughter.  He now ekes out a living as a private investigator, fed jobs by Inspector Okasha, a friend in the Egyptian police and by word of mouth.  One morning he summoned to the penthouse apartment of Saad Hanafi, a self-made man who owns a vast property empire, dozens of businesses and a football club, the Dreem Team.  Hanafi wants Makana to find their missing star player, Adil Romario, a playboy figure who’d like to star in movies.  Aware of Hanafi’s notorious reputation for playing dirty, Makana agrees to undertake the job, knowing that he is only being given a partial version of the story as to Adil’s disappearance.  It doesn’t take him long to discover that the Hanafi empire is in trouble and not all is well in the aging kingpin’s household.  Determined to locate Adil, he is thrust into Cairo’s rich and seedy underbelly, tangling with a Russian gangster, Islamic fundamentalists, the intelligence services, and an English mother searching for the daughter abducted many years earlier.

The Golden Scales has all the ingredients of a good crime thriller - colourful, engaging characters, a strong sense of place, social context and politics, a tangled knot of competing interests and intrigue, and well written prose.  For the most part it’s a very good read.  Makana is a wonderful character with an interesting back story, and the sense of place is excellent, dropping the reader into modern day Cairo and the Red Sea resorts.  Where the story is slightly let down is with some elements of the plotting.  Generally, it is nicely constructed and it builds towards a tense climax.  However, there are a couple of points which don’t really add up.  For example, Cairo is a massive city, yet Makana meets the English woman searching for her child quite by chance in a restaurant and somehow decides that she is somehow linked to the Hanafi case.  There is no basis for that assumption, and meeting her and splicing the threads together is a massive coincidence and plot device that is clumsily executed. The resolution is also a little clunky with Hanafi’s reaction seeming out of character.  These awkward moments undermine what is otherwise an interesting and enjoyable tale.