A major new detective series set in modern-day Cairo - moving between its labyrinthine back streets, and its shining tower blocks - and featuring Makana, an exiled Sudanese private investigator, escaping his own troubled past

Former police inspector Makana, in exile from his native Sudan, lives on a rickety Nile houseboat in Cairo, scratching out a living as a private investigator. When he receives a call from the notorious and powerful Saad Hanafi, he is thrust into a dangerous and glittering world. Hanafi is the owner of a star-studded football team and their most valuable player has vanished. His disappearance threatens to bring down not only the businessman's private empire but also the entire country.

Makana encounters Muslim extremists, Russian gangsters and a desperate mother hunting for her missing daughter, as his search stirs up painful memories, leading him back into the sights of an old and dangerous enemy...

A vivid picture of an effervescent Cairo, a city that could have been tailor-made as a crime-fiction backdrop. In Makana, Bilal has created a private detective who ticks all the usual boxes of doggedness, valour and ragged nobility, but it's his backstory, and the political ferment in neighbouring Sudan, that mark him out as a fascinating protagonist ... an auspicious debut