Review: The Face in the Cemetery by Michael Pearce

by Chriss Cornish published: November 13, 2007 No Comments

This Book Is About

Egypt, 1914. The outbreak of war in Europe casts ripples that can be felt even in Cairo. Gareth Owen, Mamur Zapt and Head of the Khedive’s Secret Police, is given the unhappy task of rounding up enemy aliens. And then there’s the face in the cemetery. A cat cemetery, at that.

Who disturbed the mummified remains by placing a human corpse among them? Owen would prefer to leave these matters in other hands. He has a more pressing concern in the shape of missing rifles (in war time) and dubious gun-totting ghaffirs.

My Thoughts On This Book

I enjoyed this book, but I had a little trouble getting into the groove, so to speak, when I first started reading it. Michael Pearce’s writing style and plot progression is different from most mystery novels, somehow. I also had a little trouble following some of the scene breaks. But the responsibility for that is more at the door of the Publisher, since layout is in their court.

The Face in the Cemetery is almost a historically set political thriller rather than a murder mystery. The killing of the German woman just seems incidental to everything else; the declaration of war between England and Germany, the internment of German citizens, the arming of the ghaffirs, etc.

On the one hand, the mystery of the ghaffirs and the missing guns is really interesting. But I found myself forgetting about the murder. This is a murder mystery, so the actual crime sparking the story ought to have more of the stage than it does in Face in the Cemetary.

Of course, on the other hand, the investigation into the the murdered woman’s death being kind of the background of the plot is sort of keeping with the wartime setting and may have been the author’s goal. After all, a big concern for the characters is that this simple woman’s killing not be lost amid the sudden confusion caused by the outbreak of war. So, I can see why Michael Pearce would setup the story so that the reader gets the same feeling of current events overshadowing the day-to-day. I just feel it could have been finessed better so that the murder doesn’t seem so much like a subplot.

That said, I did enjoy The Face in the Cemetery. I liked the 1914 Egypt setting and the ghaffir plot was really exciting. The characters, especially the women, were realistic characters. The Marmur Zapt Mystery series is clearly one where character development is important, something that’s traditionally missing from the mystery genre.