Showing results by author "Parker Bilal" in All Categories

Makana, a former police inspector who fled from Sudan to Cairo, lives on a rickety Nile houseboat. When the notorious and powerful Saad Hanafi hires him to track down a missing person, Makana is in no position to refuse him. Hanafi is the owner of Cairo’s star-studded football team; his most valuable player has just vanished and Adil Romario’s disappearance threatens to bring down not only Hanafi’s private empire but the entire country. But why should the city’s most powerful man hire its lowliest private detective?

Commissioned by Audible and written especially for audio format this collection brings together six crime stories through the themes of discovery, destination and arrival. Top narrators bring these gripping tales to life acknowledging the Scandinavian tradition of oral storytelling.

When British intelligence agent Marcus Winslow appears at Private Investigator Makana's door one April morning, Makana's life is about to change. Winslow has come with a mission: Ayman Nizari, an Iraqi scientist specialising in chemical warfare, is on the run and asking for asylum. He trusts only one man to bring him to safety: Makana. But why? And what part does Winslow have to play in this? The scientist has gone to ground in Istanbul, and Makana quickly discovers that in this place nothing is as it appears, in a case that will see his past and present collide with fatal consequences.

It is 2002 and Private Investigator Makana is shaken out of his grief when a routine surveillance job leads him to the horrific murder of a teenage girl. In a country where honour killings are commonplace and the authorities turn a blind eye, Makana determines to track down the perpetrator. Seeking answers in the dead girl’s past he travels to Siwa, where an old enemy lurks in the shadows. Makana discovers that the truth can be as deadly and as changeable as the desert beneath his feet.

A severed head washes up on the banks of the Nile. The police turn a blind eye. It is just another victim in a series of ritual killings of refugees. Distracted from his hunt for a missing boy, Makana feels the pull of his Sudanese past and is impelled to seek justice for the murdered emigrants.

Private Investigator Makana has a new client: the powerful art dealer Aram Kasabian. Kasabian wants him to track down a priceless painting that went missing from Baghdad during the US invasion. The art world is a far cry from the Cairo that Makana knows, but he discovers that this side of the city has its own dark underbelly. Before long he finds himself caught between dangerous enemies on a trail that leads him into the darkness of war and which threatens to send the new life he has built for himself up in flames.

When two bodies are found brutally murdered at a building site in Battersea, DS Calil Drake is first to the scene. Assigned to work with the enigmatic forensic psychologist Dr Rayhana Crane, and on the hunt for an elusive killer, Drake’s investigations lead down the dark corridors of the past to the Iraq war and the destruction he and Crane witnessed there. With a community poised on the brink of violence, Crane and Drake must put their lives on the line to stop the killer before vengeance is unleashed.

Auf der einen Seite Salafisten, auf der anderen rechte "Bürgerwehren" - und die Presse peitscht sie auf. Als Kommissar Calil Drake frühmorgens zu einer Baustelle im südlichen London gerufen wird, erwartet ihn ein makaberer Tatort: Zwei Leichen, brutal zerquetscht unter Gesteinsbrocken. Drake wittert die Chance, endlich seinen beschädigten Ruf wiederherzustellen. Woher kannten sich die Toten? Um die entscheidende Verbindung zwischen den beiden aufzudecken, nimmt er sogar die Hilfe der forensischen Psychiaterin Dr. Rayhana Crane in Kauf.

In a mission that goes badly wrong, loyal assassin Brodie takes out the nephew of the criminal mastermind he works for - and the hitman suddenly finds himself in the firing line. Saved by the woman he was sent to kill, Brodie is injured and at her mercy. But Brodie and Karima know too much about unforgiving gangster Donny to remain alive. Brodie his gun for hire. Karima his accountant. They both know where the bodies are buried. And when Donny turns the might of his brutally violent empire on them, there’s only one thing to do: run.

Début 2002, peu après le 11 Septembre. Alors que les Israéliens assiègent Ramallah, une forte tension agite les rues du Caire, où Makana file tant bien que mal la Bentley de Me Ragab, que sa femme pressent d'adultère. En réalité, l'avocat va voir sa protégée, Karima, une jeune fille gravement brûlée dans l'incendie de son domicile. La police croit à un accident, il soupçonne un crime d'honneur commis par le père de la victime, un djihadiste en cavale.

Le Caire, 2001. Makana, ex-officier de police soudanais exilé politique en Égypte, est chargé d'identifier l'auteur d'une lettre de menaces reçue par le patron de l'agence de voyages l'Ibis bleu. Peu après, Meera, employée copte de l'agence et femme d'un universitaire musulman révoqué pour opinions subversives, est assassinée dans une galerie marchande. Makana voit là un lien avec les meurtres sanglants de jeunes garçons à Imbaba, quartier déshérité comptant plusieurs églises. Et si les autorités avaient décidé d'en rendre les coptes responsables ?

1981 : Alice, six ans, fille d'une junkie anglaise de bonne famille, est enlevée en plein jour dans une ruelle du souk du Caire. 1998 : Saad Hanafi, milliardaire cairote issu de la pègre, demande au détective privé Makana de retrouver la star de son équipe de foot, Adil Romario, qui s'est volatilisé sans raison apparente. Makana, exilé politique soudanais qui vit chichement sur une awana, genre de péniche pittoresque et déglinguée, est un curieux choix : à part ses bonnes relations avec un commissaire local et un journaliste engagé, on ne peut pas dire qu'il soit bien introduit en ville.

It is the summer of 2001 and in Cairo’s crowded streets the heat is rising ...The unsolved murders of young homeless boys are fanning the embers of religious hatred. As tensions mount, Makana is hired to investigate threats made to a hapless travel agent. But Makana’s troubled past is trying to lay claim to him and when Makana witnesses a brutal killing he attracts the attention of both the security services and a dangerous gangster family....

In this second title in the London-based Crane and Drake mystery series, Cal Drake has left the police force and is now working as a private detective, having teamed up with the motorcycle-riding Dr Rayhana Crane. The chilling discovery of a severed head on the Tube draws Calil Drake back to the case he failed to solve four years ago which left his police career in tatters. Crane and Drake investigate while also searching for Howeida Almanara - a young international student from the Gulf and the missing girlfriend of a Crane family friend.