Jamal MahjoubReviews

Enjoyed plot & characters but felt the ending was a little too quick- will try another in the series

I didn’t realise that this was the second book in a series when I picked it up so I am not sure what or how much i’ve missed or its effects on this book, but; I’m sure as hell going to find out! Book one, The Divinities has now firmly cemented itself to the top of my tbr pile!

As the police are called to a gruesome discovery of a severed head found on the London Underground, Crane and Drake are hired by her childhood acquaintance and author, Marco Foulkes, to investigate the disappearance of a foreign university student Howeida Almanara.

As their investigation begins it is not long before it becomes apparent that both cases are connected, and not just connected but personal to former Detective Inspector Cal Crane and a case he was working undercover on four years ago. The decapitated head was wrapped in newspaper, a very specific page from the newspaper, the headline of the article reading – “Finger of Suspicion Pointed at Rising Star Met Police. Links to Organised Crime.” The rising star? None other than DI Crane!

The investigation of the unidentified head is being led by Crane’s former police partner, newly promoted DI Kelly Marsh. Unofficially they share case details helping both Crane in his new career as a private investigator and Marsh’s official investigation.

As the pressure grows to crack the case more details emerge, details and evidence that points the finger of blame straight at Crane.

Can PI’s Drake and Crane, with the help of Marsh, clear his name and lead them to the real criminals in time?

Set in London this book brings the city to life across the pages, from the high end of some of the expensive boroughs to the darker side of the city and its forgotten individuals who make their beds in doorways. It takes you on a journey into some of the seedier sides of the city as well as the gang culture who always seem three steps ahead of the police, touching on all to real problems such as human trafficking, corruption, organised crime and exploitation that go on not just in the fictional London but the real city as well.

The book is filled with multicultural fictional characters, some good, some pure evil wrapped in flesh and bone, all blended with a storyline that could just as easily feature in the True Crime genre with a compulsive, high tension plot and an ending that will drive you insane! I just hope the next book isn’t going to be too much of a wait because it has certainly left me needing more and I can guarantee that you will feel the same once you have turned that last page!

This is a real slice of life wrapped in fiction.

The Heights will be published on 03 September 2020 and is available for pre-order now.

Moody and atmospheric with an engaging private detective in Cairo

The year is 1998, and former police inspector Makana, a refugee from his native Sudan, lives on a rickety houseboat on the Nile outside Cairo. He fled his country years earlier when it became too dangerous for him and his family under the radical Islamic regime that had recently overthrown the previous government. He ekes out a bare subsistence working as a private investigator while mourning the loss of his wife and daughter, who didn't survive their escape. His fortunes have the opportunity to change for the better when he is hired to find a missing soccer star.

Adil Romario has been missing for over two weeks without a word or sighting of one of Cairo’s favorite sones. It is as if the young man has disappeared off the face of the Earth. The Dreem Team's owner, Saad Hanafi, is desperate to find Adil for his club's success and personal reasons. Hanafi wasn't always on the right side of the law, and old enemies may be behind the young man's disappearance.

As Makana delves into the mystery, he discovers there may be a link between Adil's disappearance and that of the young daughter of an Englishwoman who went missing 17 years earlier. When the Englishwoman is found dead, Makana, with some support from a friend on the local police force, two agents from Britain's Special Branch out of London, and a young, local reporter trying to make a name for himself, digs deeper and further afield, coming to the realization that Hanafi isn't telling him everything he needs to know to find the missing soccer star.

THE GOLDEN SCALES is a complex and intriguing historical mystery set in moody, atmospheric Cairo. The descriptions of place drew me into the story, where the writing and plot gripped me and never let go. The characters who populate the pages are colorful and well-drawn. I could easily visualize their dress, manner of speech, and gestures. I was invested in Makana's success as if it were my own. The story is action-filled, and Makana investigates like a pro, so I was quite satisfied when the resolution came.

THE GOLDEN SCALES is the first book in the Makana Mystery series by Parker Bilal, a pseudonym of renowned author Jamal Mahjoub, and was originally published in 2012. Currently, there are six novels in the series, the last of which was published in 2017. I recommend this book to mystery readers that would like an intriguing, well-crafted story with historical and political subplots enveloped in a setting that comes alive on the page.

2009 (my review can be found on the LibraryThing page linked)
http://www.librarything.com/topic/54129#1180293

The first in a series featuring an ex-pat Sudanese policeman eking out a living as a private detective in Cairo. Having fled his country after its takeover by Islamists and the death at their hands of his wife and daughter, Markana rents a small floating structure on a riverbank and tries to earn enough to survive. He is approached by one of richest men in Cairo, one of the breed of gangsters who decide to go straight after making their fortunes. The star of his professional soccer team is missing, and, unsure of who he can trust, he wants someone to whom he has no connections otherwise. Multiple connected mysteries crop up, most prominently the murder of an Englishwoman who comes to Cairo each year to search for the daughter who disappeared almost 20 years ago as a young child.

The story is intense and interesting, and Cairo is certainly an unusual venue for the average English-speaking mystery reader. The action primarily takes place among people on two economic levels: the wealthy, who live in towers and barely notice people not in their own class (doesn't that sound familiar?), and the very, very poor, whose hovels often crouch at the foot of the towers. There's also quite a bit of information about the Islamist seizure of Sudan and what that meant for educated and professional people. Very rewarding reading.

Another good contribution to the Makana series. Makana is humane and likeable, his world simpathetically but honestly portrayed. I do think that the endings of this and the previous volume have fallen into the trap of over-dramatisation, not every reader wants cheap adrenaline rushes. But on the whole this remains an enjoyable series, well worth reading. 12 May 2018½

Another good offering from Parker Bilal, the third in his Makana series, combining a well written detective mystery, convincing characterisation and insight into Egyptian society. The finale is slightly over-driven, not so much in the events themselves as in the way that so many of the incidental characters are too conveniently dealt with, but as this is the first foot Bilal has put wrong in the series so far, I'll forgive him. 23 March 2018½

This is number two in a series I've had problems getting from the library. Finally I have managed to find the later ones in the series. And the novels do improve as the author becomes more confidant in his writing style and more comfortable with his main character. Certainly the series is well worth reading.

'Dogstar Rising' is an unusual mystery novel set in contemporary Egypt. Young boys are turning up dead and mutilated. In the muddle that is Eygpt's mix of cultures someone is trying to stir up trouble and blame the Coptic Christians.

Investigator Makana, a mystery man from the Sudan, a refugee form the war there, becomes involved when he sees a murder. He finds a thread linking that murder to those of the boys. Suddenly the police and state security services are breathing down his neck and all hell breaks loose.

Tightly written, the second in a series, and well worth a read for the exotic locations.

This second in the Makana series very much continues where the first left off. A well ploted criminal investigation sits within a wider portrayal of Cairo at a time when its society is close to the edge - and inexorably inching closer to that edge.. Both angles are presented in a thoughtful and unhyped way which draws this reader further in as the book proceeds. 24 October 2017.

DARK WATER by Parker Bilal is a thriller about a Makana, a private investigator with a complicated past who is drawn into doing a job for the British government and quickly the job becomes infinitely more complex, layered and more personal than Makana ever though it would.
Bilal has created this character named Makana who is a troubled man who has experienced great loss in his life, but the reader pulls for him because Makana wants to overcome his past and live for his future, it's just that his past keeps haunting him. Most every character (except a loyal and pure of heart taxi driver) Makana comes across in DARK WATER having cloudy motives, a penchant for lying, and hiding the truth through misdirection and guile. Bilal drops clues, some blatant and some quite subtle, about what is really going on; as the reader, several times I had to go back to previous scenes to grasp what Makana was figuring out. As with many book series that I have jumped into in the middle, I did find myself thinking this book would be enhanced had I read the previous books in the series.
Full of twists and double crosses, DARK WATER will keep the reader holding their breath and wondering how Makana will escape all of the traps set for him.
I received a copy of this book as part of the Goodreads Giveaway program.

These books keep getting darker, or at least that's my perception with this one. Makana has evidently built a reputation that gets him hired by some not-so-good folks, and in fact there are many not-so-good folks in this book. The backstory starts with the first Gulf War, and the looting by Iraqi soldiers in Kuwait before they were pushed out. But it's set after, maybe just after, the second Gulf War under the second Bush, and the spew of dangerous characters and disillusioned idealists from that war as well, out for prizes and even more for revenge. Makana must walk a tightrope over these violent men as they each try to use him for their own purposes.

I had a few quibbles with the story. An obvious moment of cellphone sabotage goes unnoticed because Makana is so unused to cellphones, but wouldn't he have picked up on the classic manner of the maneuver?
Some dialog at the end of the book is repeated unnecessarily, pointing to careless editing. Police corruption is almost a caricature. Or maybe not. (I've never experienced Egyptian police behavior.)

There's nothing here that will derail the series for me, but it was a bit of a pull to get to the end of the story.

A superior thriller with a raft of interesting characters, an absorbing plot and a strong sense of time and place. If Sudanese ex-policeman and private investigator Markana is the main character, he is closely rivalled by Cairo itself, dark and brooding in its poverty and crime, bright and empty in its wealth, always vital. Politics and religion, greed and corruption are all examined alongside just enough human warmth and integrity to hold it together. 2 September 2017

I was eager to get this newest Bilal from the library, but then had a bit of a problem pushing through it. I just wasn't that in the mood for a dark mystery set in a dysfunctional society, as well-written as it is. But it gradually grew on me. The story was complicated, but not hard to follow, and I guessed the secrets before the reveal. I'll certainly follow the series as it grows.½

Set in Cairo an Egyptian investigator, an ex-cop, gets involved in a project that of course gets progressively out of control and more dangerous. An enjoyable read and not too complex a story. I enjoyed the central character, the investigator Markana, who had issues but not flawed as so many of his ilk are. I was somewhat disappointed that the location, Cairo, didn't seem to figure as strongly as I'd like it to.

Would I read another? Maybe.½

This is the second book in the series by Parker Bilal with the private detective, Makana, a Sudenese exile living in a very seedy Cairo. He's asked to investigate some threatening letters and things turn very nasty. In the background are religious tensions and a serial killer.
I think I enjoyed the first book better, but this was still quite good.
3.5 stars

This is a mystery set in Cairo back in the 1980s. Macana is an outsider, a former police inspector from Sudan who didn't turn a blind eye when he should have and who so was forced to leave his country and lost everyone dear to him. He barely makes a living investigating cases the local police don't get involved with. The sense of place is extraordinary. Bilal makes Cairo seem real--rotting away before your eyes. Corruption is everywhere. Macana's investigation on behalf of a "former" criminal overlord takes him through many levels and layers of society.
The thing I found hard to believe was Macana's incredible naivety that came through in the flashbacks--it didn't seem realistic that he would continually ignore all the danger signs that should have been telling him to leave the country long before he did.
Interesting mystery story. Fabulous sense of place. Good character. 3.5 stars

Quite an intersting an unusual mystery set in Cairo in 2004. Makana, a Sudanese man who works as a private investigator, is asked to trace a stolen work of art by an influential and wealthy art dealer. The work has a tangled history, having vanished from Baghdad during the US invasion, and soon Makana finds himself entangled in the violent world of a powerbroker from Saddam's regime, who may be spinning new webs in Egypt under the protection of high government officials. The mystery takes a back seat to the setting, which is fascinating and almost overpoweringly rich. This is the fourth in a series that borrows from the American gumshoe tradition to explore contemporary Egypt, providing the kind of detail and texture that's missing from the news we hear (scant as it is).

I loved this book. The seedy atmosphere of Siwa reminded me of Alexandria, where there are so many relics of a more vibrant time, some lived in and others abandoned. Towards the end it was difficult to work out who was laying traps for whom, but that seemed quite realistic too! The picture of the society he paints is so sinister that I wonder how he makes his stories so exciting; perhaps it's the lively characters - I always want to know more about them and their lives.

This really is one of those books that takes the Western reader into a very different world.

Makana is at first engaged to track a lawyer whose wife says she thinks he is having an affair. The lawyer in turn hires Makana to find out the truth about the death of a young woman in a house fire. The investigation takes him out of Cairo to the desert and he finds himself assisting local police in solving the horrific murders of two local men, one the local Qadi who was trying to make money from selling land that he didn't own, and the other a simpleton who thought he saw a ghost.

Predictably, it is all quite a tangled story, but one that has its roots in the past. In the end I thought the plot became just a little too tangled for the author, and I didn't think the final resolution was all that satisfying, although probably realistic.½

The Golden Scales by Parker Bilal ★ ★ ★ ★

A mystery set in Cairo is not my traditional fair. Throw in a plot involving football and you’ve almost lost me. However, as I read this first paragraph, I realised my visit to Cairo via The Golden Scales was to be thrilling, led by a writer who knows how to open with a punch.
“The bright light struck her full in the eyes and for an instant she was blinded, as if struck by some ancient curse. Liz Markham reared back, completely stalled by the human mass that confronted her. Her heart racing, she began to run. Her child was somewhere out there, lost in this madness.”
By the time I’d turned the first page, I knew another thing, London born author Parker Bilal (pen-name of Jamal Mahjoub) could write and pace with the best mystery thriller authors. This from an writer classified as a literary novelist—which I usually take to mean ‘can turn a beautiful praise but the pace is slow.’
The Golden Scales introduces us to Makana, an exiled Sudanese private investigator, living on a run-down Nile houseboat. Hired by wealthy Hanafi, owner of Cairo’s star football team, he finds himself investigating the team’s star player Adil Romario.
Everything is a closely held mystery until the last few pages: What happened to Makana’s wife and daughter years before? Why did the powerful Hanafi hire the lowly Makana? What does a twenty-year-old case of a missing child and her English mother Liz have to do with his investigation?
As layers of sub-plots and colourful characters are paved, you are drawn into a fascinating world of the wealthy and glamorous of Cairo and just as quickly plunged into the dark and cutthroat life of the criminal underworld. The links between the two revealing themselves the deeper Makana pursues his leads.
This is Egypt without the pyramids but peopled with dark characters, intriguing back stories and a stoic, intelligent lead character, who carries himself with credible assurance.
Bilal has created a character and setting thriller lovers will be eager to visit again and again. The Golden Scales is the first of a detective series featuring Makana and this is one reader who looks forward to my next visit to Egypt, with our without pyramids.

Visit http://anadventureinreading.blogspot.com.au/ for more reviews & author interviews.

Set in an unsettled Cairo, shortly after the 1997 terrorist attacks in Luxor, this is the story of a private detective hired to find a missing football star by the team's millionaire owner. Makana is a terrific character: brave, damaged and cynical, a former policeman who fled Sudan when civil unrest made it too dangerous. The story is interwoven with a cold case about an English woman trying to find her daughter who was abducted in Cairo 16 years earlier. When the woman is murdered, Makana takes an interest in the case and investigates that along with the missing footballer.

This is an absorbing mystery, perhaps a little overcomplicated, perhaps too reliant on coincidence, but redeemed by the strong sense of place and the intriguing characters. It moves at a good pace and holds the reader's interest. It's a strong crime novel with a very interesting setting.

The novel's twin strands of the modern-day historical/archaeological investigation and the 17th century story which it unfolds, echo the central themes of the intertwining of East and West at a critical point in the scientific field and the cultural barriers for the key individuals which are created through prejudice and fear.

The historical tale is evocatively written and is an engagingly ripping yarn. The added dimensions of how fear and ignorance block scientific advance and the focus on the characters who manage to escape or transcend the cultural barriers give the novel some added texture and depth.

I didn't find the final part of the novel as satisfying as the rest, but it's still a good read overall. It contrives to address some uncomfortable themes and deliver relevant historical background without leaving readers feeling they've been too earnestly lectured; it kept me turning the pages and left me wanting to read more by the author.

DOGSTAR RISING takes place during the Egyptian summer of 2001. Makana is an exiled Sudanese policeman now working as a private detective in Cairo and he is hired by the owner of a struggling travel agency to look into the matter of some threatening letters that the agency has received. When he starts working undercover at the travel agency Makana meets a woman called Meera and it is her secret that begins to shed light on what might be going on. At the same time, a series of brutal murders of young boys is taking place in the city and suspicion is directed towards the Copts, a minority religious group. Makana becomes unwittingly involved in this case too.

Jamal Mahjoub has written five literary novels but it was his pseudonymous creations as Parker Bilal that were the subject of the session I caught at a local writers’ festival last month. DOGSTAR RISING is the second book to feature the character of Makana and I wish I’d read the first one as I did have the occasional sense I was missing out on something by not having read the story that introduced Makana. That aside though this is a terrifically atmospheric novel, offering the unique mixture of insights that only someone who was born in England to an English mum and a Sudanese dad and has lived in Sudan, Egypt, the UK, Denmark and (currently) Spain can supply.

The strongest element of the novel by far is the sense of time and place conveyed. Cairo is depicted as a place of poverty, corruption and a kind of vague, direction-less social unrest (it would take another decade for that to coalesce into something stronger). In some ways it is an exotic world very different to my own but it other ways, such as the ease with which ‘the mob’ can be manipulated to turn on minorities, is eerily and sadly familiar. The anti refugee sentiment in particular could be plucked from some of my own country’s present-day newspapers.

Makana lives on the fringes of his community mostly because few people let him forget for long that he is an outsider, though also I think because of the tragedies in his own personal history which have led him to choose a more solitary life than he might otherwise have led. But despite those tragedies and the harsh way he tends to be treated he is one of the good guys, aiming always to get to the truth of a thing even if that proves to be dangerous. He isn’t unrealistically wholesome though. In this novel he is presented with a very real moral dilemma and we see him struggle with the difficult decision in a credible way.

Although recognisably a work of crime fiction DOGSTAR RISING does offer a lot more than the standard whodunnit. In fact in some ways the mystery element of the book is the weakest due to some unnecessary complexities that feel a bit contrived. But overall this is a very entertaining and thought provoking novel that I would recommend to those who enjoy exotic locations depicted authentically (though I would read THE GOLDEN SCALES, the first book in the series, if you can lay your hands on that one first).

A very noir mystery that takes place in Cairo, Egypt, with all the requisite components of noir: an emotionally wounded detective, a society consumed with greed and poverty, a missing celebrity who doesn't know who he really is, a lost girl, a clash of cultures, as well as the religious upheaval we hear so much about in the Muslim world. I hope Bilal writes a dozen more of them.½

Summer (northern hemisphere), 2001, and religious and political tensions in Egypt form the basis of the second Makana crime novel by Parker Bilal. Whilst there's nothing new in the use of crime fiction as the vehicle for exploring society on the edge, DOGSTAR RISING set, as it is, in that place at that time, provides an illuminating alternative viewpoint. Not automatically that of the "opposing", it is a look at pressures and perspectives from another angle. It's edgy fiction based in a very edgy world.

Whilst it's obvious to Makana, Private Investigator and Sudanese refugee, that the rise of religious hatred and intolerance is history repeating itself, other outcomes are less obvious. The plot of the book revolves around the connections between the murder of a number of young boys mostly forgotten, abandoned children and the persecution of Coptic Christians. Into this mix must fit the State Security Services, the local police, religious leaders, a lowly travel agent and his family connections and a disreputable Sudanese businessman. There is also the story of Makana himself, a refugee from war-torn, corrupt Sudan, his family gone, his life lived now somewhere on the outskirts. Partially as a result of being a refugee, partly because of who he is.

Bilal works his way steadily through a plot which, whilst complicated, never bogs down. He does that whilst continuing to draw a picture of a place and a culture which is searingly honest and instructive.

DOGSTAR RISING is the second book in the Makana series, and in two books it's proved itself extremely impressive. Tackling a range of issues in a society that is particularly on edge, neither book (THE GOLDEN SCALES is the first) pull any punches, albeit without beating the reader around the head and shoulders. Clever, intelligent and extremely thought-provoking, in two books, in the space of a couple of months for this reader, this has become a series to follow closely.


Parker Bilal will be attending the Perth Writer's Festival and Adelaide Writers Week where he'll also be doing Crime Writing Workshops and launching Bloomsbury's Short Sentence Writing competition for Budding Crime Writers

http://www.austcrimefiction.org/review/dogstar-rising-parker-bilal