The Ghost Runner: A Makana Investigation

By Parker Bilal

It is 2002 and as tanks roll into the West Bank and the reverberations of 9/11 echo across the globe, tensions are running high on Cairo's streets. Private Investigator Makana, in exile from his native Sudan and increasingly haunted by memories of the wife and daughter he lost, is shaken out of his grief when a routine surveillance job leads him to the horrific murder of a teenage girl.

Seeking answers, he travels to Siwa, an oasis town on the edge of the great Sahara desert, where the law seems disturbingly far away. As violence follows him through the twisting, sand-blown streets and 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

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Release date: Feb 13, 2014
• ISBN: 9781408841129

Parker Bilal

Parker Bilal is the pseudonym of Jamal Mahjoub, the critically acclaimed literary novelist. He is the author of the Makana Investigations series, the third of which, The Ghost Runner, was longlisted for the Theakston's Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award. The Divinities, the first in his Crane and Drake London crime series, was published in 2019. Born in London, he has lived in a number of places, including the UK, Denmark, Spain and, currently, the Netherlands. @Parker_Bilal | jamalmahjoub.com

Reviews for The Ghost Runner

[ffortsa · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I was eager to get this newest Bilal from the library, but then had a bit of a problem pushing through it. I just wasn't that in the mood for a dark mystery set in a dysfunctional society, as well-written as it is. But it gradually grew on me. The story was complicated, but not hard to follow, and I guessed the secrets before the reveal. I'll certainly follow the series as it grows.

[gossypia · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I loved this book. The seedy atmosphere of Siwa reminded me of Alexandria, where there are so many relics of a more vibrant time, some lived in and others abandoned. Towards the end it was difficult to work out who was laying traps for whom, but that seemed quite realistic too! The picture of the society he paints is so sinister that I wonder how he makes his stories so exciting; perhaps it's the lively characters - I always want to know more about them and their lives.

[smik_3 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This really is one of those books that takes the Western reader into a very different world.Makana is at first engaged to track a lawyer whose wife says she thinks he is having an affair. The lawyer in turn hires Makana to find out the truth about the death of a young woman in a house fire. The investigation takes him out of Cairo to the desert and he finds himself assisting local police in solving the horrific murders of two local men, one the local Qadi who was trying to make money from selling land that he didn't own, and the other a simpleton who thought he saw a ghost.Predictably, it is all quite a tangled story, but one that has its roots in the past. In the end I thought the plot became just a little too tangled for the author, and I didn't think the final resolution was all that satisfying, although probably realistic.