Michael Pearce (author)

Michael Pearce (1933) is an award-winning author of historical fiction and police procedurals.

Pearce was raised in Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. As an adult, he trained as a Russian interpreter during the Cold War,^[1] and subsequently became involved with Amnesty International.

His first novel, The Mamur Zapt and the Return of the Carpet, was published in 1988. That was the start of a "Mamur Zapt" series of mysteries.

He has also published a number of "A Dead Man in..." mysteries, set in the period preceding World War I and featuring Sandor Seymour, an officer of Scotland Yard's Special Branch who is sent by the British Foreign Office to deal with various crimes involving members of the British diplomatic service. These mysteries are notable for their attention to period detail and setting.

His 1992 The Mamur Zapt and the Spoils of Egypt won the Crime Writers' Association's Last Laugh Award for funniest crime novel,^[2] and his 1999 Death of an Effendi was shortlisted for the Ellis Peters Award for best historical crime novel.^[3]

The books in the Mamur Zapt series are:

The Mamur Zapt and the Return of the Carpet (Published 1988)
The Mamur Zapt and the Night of the Dog (Published 1989)
The Mamur Zapt and the Donkey-Vous (Published 1990)
The Mamur Zapt and the Men Behind (Published 1991)
The Mamur Zapt and the Girl in the Nile (Published 1992)
The Mamur Zapt and the Spoils of Egypt (Published 1992)
The Mamur Zapt and the Camel of Destruction (Published 1993)
The Snake Catcher's Daughter (Published 1994)
The Mingrelian Conspiracy (Published 1995)
The Fig Tree Murder (Published 1997)
The Last Cut (Published 1998)
Death of an Effendi (Published 1999)
A Cold Touch of Ice (Published 2000)
The Face in the Cemetery (Published 2001)
The Point in the Market
The Mark of the Pasha

(Note that some reprint editions of the Mamur Zapt series retitle the books by dropping the opening phrase "The Mamur Zapt and...".)

The books in the "A Dead Man in..." series are:

A Dead Man in Trieste (2004)
A Dead Man in Istanbul (2005)
A Dead Man in Athens (2006)
A Dead Man in Tangier (2007)
A Dead Man in Barcelona (2008)
A Dead Man in Naples (2009)
A Dead Man in Malta (2010)

References

^ Michael Pearce at Tangled Web UK
^ List of winners of the Last Laugh Award at the Crime Writers' Association
^ The CWA Ellis Peters Historical Dagger for Historical Detective Fiction 1999/2000: A judge's report by Richard Lee, from Solander: The Magazine of the Historical Novel Society, Issue 7, Spring 2000; archived at historicalnovelsociety.org

Persondata
Name	Pearce, Michael
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	1933
Place of birth
Date of death
Place of death