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"Tourists are quite safe provided they don't do anything stupidly reckless," so Captain Owen, the Mamur Zapt, Head of Cairo's Political CID under British Rule, assures the press. But what of Monsieur Moulin, kidnapped from taking tea on the terrace at Shepheard's Hotel? How has Mr. Colthorpe Hartley also disappeared? No one has actually seen either victim vanish.... Are these ordinary crimes? Are they intended as deliberately symbolic blows at the British? Or are they just a means of discouraging tourism? Owen had better unravel it quickly, or else.... And where better to start from than the donkey-vous beneath the terrace, home of Cairo's humble but enterprising youths who hire out their donkeys for photographs and rides...

Michael Pearce grew up in the (then) Anglo-Egyptian Sudan among the political and other tensions he draws on for his books. He returned there later to teach and retains a human rights interest in the area. His career has followed the standard academic rake's progress from teaching to writing to administration. He finds international politics a pallid imitation of academic ones.