Last Cut

Praise for The Last Cut... "Oh, this is just a fine novel....With great and gentle humour, excellent dialogue and a twisty plot...Pearce enthralls and entertains us....Great story, marvelously executed." -Carl Brookins, author of the Michael Tanner mysteries For millennia, Egypt has depended upon the waters of the Nile to flood and fertilize the land. A barrage or dam-like structure several miles above Cairo controls the flow of water to southern Egypt through a series of regulators. Now, someone has attempted to blow up one of them. Damaging a regulator is not a petty matter, so Gareth Owen, the Mamur Zapt, Chief of Cairo's Secret Police, is hurriedly summoned. He hasn't a clue what a regulator is. Nor can he identify the mysterious Lizard Man who seems to have a grudge against the whole Egyptian irrigation system. But he knows that the ceremonial cutting of the temporary dam thrown up each year across the mouth of the Khalig Canal restarts the whole irrigation cycle and is cause for great celebration. He also knows that this will be the last cut before the canal is filled in and a modern tramway built over it. It's a plan many Cairenes do not support. Then a young woman's body is discovered in the dry canal. Is this the traditional ritual sacrifice? A sign of sabotage? A diversion? Or just plain murder? Michael Pearce was raised in Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. He trained as a Russian interpreter but later moved to an academic career. He now lives in London and is best known as the author of the award-winning Mamur Zapt books.