The brilliant sequel to the critically acclaimed PASHAZADE

Among many other things, Ashraf Bey is a fugitive from the US justice system (definitely); son of the Emir of Tunis (possibly); and chief of detectives in the El Iskandryian police force (apparently). Small wonder that he's a little confused...

Raf's ex-fiance Zara still doesn't want to see him, so she says. His nine-year-old niece is busy doing things with computers that are strictly illegal. And when the city suddenly starts to fall apart and Zara's father is accused of mass-murder, Raf begins to learn the true cost of loyalty...

As the US, France and Germany try to dominate both the present and future of the Middle East in this alternate 21st century - as they have the past - Ashraf Bey must become both saviour and avenger. It's not an easy trick, but someone has to do it...

The third instalment in Jon Courtenay Grimwood's critically acclaimed series of Ashraf Bey mysteries

Detective. Diplomat. Uncle. Killer.

Ashraf Bey has been many things since arriving in El Iskandryia from Seattle. One thing he hasn't been, as yet, is a son to Moncef, Emir of Tunis - the father Raf has still to meet. Of course, Raf doesn't believe the Emir is his father anyway. (Given his mother's insistence that he's the son of a Swedish hitch hiker).

And now it may be too late, since the rumours that don't have Emir Moncef escaping assassination have him hovering on the edge of death. Despite refusing a plea for help from the Emir's chief of security, Raf still finds himself being drawn towards Tunis. It seems he has his own part in an unfolding political crisis that began decades earlier with US anti-globalisation riots and the Emir's refusal to ratify the 2005 UN Accord on Biotechnology.

The murder of an imperious North African noblewoman upsets the marriage plans of her nephew, who becomes the prime suspect. After Chief of Detectives Felix Abrinsky is called to an affluent home in Isk (El Iskandriya), Egypt, to examine the body of a recently murdered society matron, the story flashes back to the events that led up to the murder.

Young Ashraf Bey ("Raf") is united for the first time with his wealthy aunt, Lady Nafisa, who helped get him out of Huntsville, an American prison, where he went under the name of ZeeZee. (Alter ego or alternate reality? You decide.) Though Raf maintains that he worked as an attache, italicized chapters from ZeeZee's perspective paint a darker existence in Seattle.

Indeed, many of the characters have damaging secrets, including Abrinsky, who was fired from the LAPD. Raf is on his way to an arranged marriage to the beautiful and outspoken Zara when Nafisa deems Zara unsuitable for her jailbird nephew. Shortly thereafter, Nafisa is stabbed to death with her own pen. The suspicion cast on Raf is particularly dangerous for him because the higher his profile, the more vulnerable he is to his felonious former associates. Resourceful Raf determines to solve the crime himself.

In this first American installment of a trilogy published in England beginning in 2001, Grimwood (reMix, 1999, etc.) wraps gritty realism in layers of suspicion and suggestion (is Isk itself fantasy?), creating an antihero as unpredictable as Tom Ripley.

Sixteen-year-old Finley Jayne and her "straynge band of mysfits" have journeyed from London to America to rescue their friend Jasper, hauled off by bounty hunters. But Jasper is in the clutches of a devious former friend demanding a trade-the dangerous device Jasper stole from him...for the life of the girl Jasper loves. 

One false move from Jasper and the strange clockwork collar around Mei's neck tightens. And tightens. 

In 1897 England, sixteen-year-old Finley Jayne has no one…except the "thing" inside her.

When a young lord tries to take advantage of Finley, she fights back. And wins. But no Victorian girl has a darker side that makes her capable of knocking out a full-grown man with one punch….

Only Griffin King sees the magical darkness inside her that says she's special, says she's one of The orphaned duke takes her in from the gaslit streets against the wishes of his band of misfits: Emily, who has her own special abilities and an unrequited love for Sam, who is part robot; and Jasper, an American cowboy with a shadowy secret.

Griffin's investigating a criminal called The Machinist, the mastermind behind several recent crimes by automatons. Finley thinks she can help—and finally be a part of something, finally fit in.

But The Machinist wants to tear Griff's little company of strays apart, and it isn't long before trust is tested on all sides. At least Finley knows whose side she's on—even if it seems no one believes her.