A Makana Investigation
6 primary works
Book 1
In Cairo the ghosts of the past are stirring...
Makana is a former police inspector who fled for his life to Cairo from his native Sudan seven years ago. Down on his luck and haunted by the past, he lives on a rickety Nile houseboat. When the notorious and powerful Saad Hanafi hires him to track down a missing person Makana is in no position to refuse him.
Hanafi, whose past is as shady as his fortune is glittering, is the owner of Cairo's star-studded football team. His most valuable player has just vanished and Adil Romario's disappearance threatens to bring down not only Hanafi's private empire but the entire country. But why should the city's most powerful man hire its lowliest private detective?
Thrust into a dangerous and glittering world, Makana's investigation leads him into the treacherous underbelly of his adopted country - where he encounters Muslim extremists, Russian gangsters and a desperate mother hunting for her missing daughter. It becomes a trail that stirs up painful memories, leading him back into the sights of an old and dangerous enemy...
Book 2
It is the summer of 2001 and in Cairo's crowded streets the heat is rising...
The unsolved murders of young homeless boys are fanning the embers of religious hatred. As tensions mount, Makana, who fled his native Sudan a decade ago, has been hired to investigate threats that have been made to a hapless travel agent. The case draws him close to Meera, a woman who knows what it is like to lose everything and who needs his help. But Makana's troubled past is trying to lay claim to him once again, this time in the form of a dubious businessman who possesses a powerful secret.
When Makana witnesses a brutal killing he uncovers a web of intrigue, violence and old secrets, and attracts the attention of some very dangerous people.
Book 3
Book 4
Private Investigator Makana has a new client: the powerful art dealer Aram Kasabian. Kasabian wants him to track down a priceless painting that went missing from Baghdad during the US invasion. All the dealer can tell Makana is that the piece was smuggled into Egypt by an Iraqi war criminal who doesn’t want to be found.
The art world is a far cry from the shady streets and dirty alleyways of the Cairo that Makana knows, but he discovers that this side of the city has its own dark underbelly. Before long, he finds himself caught between dangerous enemies on a trail that leads him into the darkness of war and which threatens to send the new life he has built for himself up in flames.
Book 5
More trouble on the streets of Cairo in a gripping new investigation for 'one of crime fiction's most interesting and sympathetic detectives' (The Times)
A severed head washes up on the banks of the Nile.
The police turn a blind eye. It is just another victim in a series of ritual killings of refugees.
Distracted from his hunt for a missing boy, Makana feels the pull of his Sudanese past and is impelled to seek justice for the murdered emigrants.
In the dark heart of Cairo, Makana soon discovers the two cases may be connected in dangerous and unexpected ways.
Book 6
The sixth thriller in the Makana series called "excellent" by Marilyn Stasio in the New York Times Book Review.
When an Englishman, Marcus Winslow, appears at Private Investigator Makana's door one April morning, Makana does not realize that he will soon risk losing everything he has built for himself in Cairo. Winslow represents the British Secret Intelligence Services and he has a special mission to offer, one that Makana cannot resist: Ayman Nizari, a dangerous specialist in biochemical nerve agents, is on the run and asking for asylum. The only person who can bring him in is Makana--by Nizari's own request.
Nizari has gone underground in Istanbul and Makana, for the first time since arriving in Egypt, must travel abroad, to a city he doesn't know. Can he trust Marcus Winslow? Or is something more sinister in the works?
In Istanbul, Makana soon realizes that nothing is what it appears to be. Suddenly, his past is racing to catch up with him, and Makana becomes both hunter and hunted.