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 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