Murder in the Tower of Happiness

“When the first armchair smashed into the asphalt, Sergeant Ashmouni was at his usual spot on the median of the Nile Corniche, trapped by the road’s twin currents turbulently flowing forth to Maadi and back to Old Cairo. He was wiping the sweat away from his eyes with his worn out sleeve—and in the process adding a new stain to his white traffic-police uniform—when surprise from the thunderous impact catapulted him into the fast lane of the side of the road closest to the Nile.”Thus opens this fast-paced city thriller laced with dry humor that takes us inside Borg al-Saada—‘Tower of Happiness,’ one of the luxury high-rises planted like alien bodies amid the fields along the Nile south of Cairo—and inside the sordid lives and lavish lifestyles...