By chance last month I found myself reading two mystery novels at once, although I rarely even read one mystery novel at once. The first was Parker Bilal’s The Golden Scales, set in the criminal underworld of 1990s Cairo; and the second was Deborah Crombie’s A Share in Death, in which a Scotland Yard superintendent has rather a busman’s holiday at his cousin’s time share.
Golden Scales sees Sudanese investigator Makana engaged by Egyptian mogul Saad Hanafi to find the missing Adil Romario, the star player of Hanafi’s football (soccer) team. As Makana digs deeper into Romario’s dealings, he finds a world of seedy filmmakers, Russian gangsters, and an Englishwoman searching for her lost daughter. Meanwhile, he is haunted by his own wife and daughter, who died as the family attempted to flee Sudan for Egypt.
As Eva mentioned in her review a few years ago (which I guess I missed seeing until now!), The Golden Scales leans into thriller territory a little, which is not always my jam. Bilal’s depiction of Cairo — both the fantastic wealth of the corrupt men who run it, and the desperate poverty in its underworld — was enough to keep me interested, though, and I’ll probably try at least one more in this series.
The second mystery, A Share in Death, was part of my effort to clear old books off my TBR spreadsheet: Eva (again!) recommended this series in early 2014, and I’ve been meaning to read it ever since. I meant to read the first few chapters to get a feel for it, and I very quickly found myself halfway through the book! It has a very classic, Agatha-Christie feel to it that I loved, with a murder that happens at a holiday timeshare, and every boarder has something to hide.
For the first time since I can’t remember when, I didn’t read the end to discover who did the murder. I thought it would be fun to try and guess! I was a little behind the detective, I admit, but I had narrowed it down to two suspects, one of whom did indeed turn out to be the guilty party. Anyway, Deborah Crombie writes exactly the kind of mystery I like to read, where nobody does autopsies there’s no gritty realism and everyone has secrets and it’s a nice little puzzle for the reader. I’m looking forward to reading more books in this series.
Readers, incriminate yourselves! If you were going to do a murder, how would you do it?