
Member Reviews

The author takes us on a thriller of a journey into Egypt when Primrose embarks on a journey from the UK in the quest to find her father Archie Nevenden who has been missing’ from Cairo for several weeks. Alongside Prim is Harry Tavener following orders from his superiors in London. Part fiction and part fact, this makes for an excellent and enjoyable read. Cairo 1938 on the cusp of War. I loved the way the author pulled this novel together, interweaving the various elements and historical facts but always keeping something up his sleeve to maintain the intrigue and excitement. Excellent.
My thanks to NetGalley and the publishers Atlantic Books for this pre-publication copy for review.

this was a really clever book with a story that had me totally immersed. the whole thing felt thought out and that Perry new exactly where she wanted to take us readers and how. and it played out beautifully.
the book brings us to Europe in 1938. Primrose is living with her mother after her father left them both years ago. but then she gets news that her dad has gone missing in Egypt and there is more than a little concern over his whereabouts or what he might have been doing before he vanished.
Prim decides to act and travels to Egypt to find him herself. on the way she meets a man named Harry who might be hiding a few things of his own. Harry and Prim start digging and learning things that take them from one shock to another in terms of what her father might have been up to. this doesn't bode well.
there is a lot mixed in to this book. some i think i wasn't clever enough to absorb or understand the significance of, but this of course all on me which i feel a little ignorant and guilt for. i did try to google myself clever but im not going to say a few searches mean im where i should be on some of these topics. i do love anything that revolves around the war so it took me to some new places that had me absorbing as much as i could.
this book covers a colourful mix of a few genres and i felt like i was smarter just from reading it but also enjoyed the storytelling. the balance made it easier for me to absorb both.

I enjoyed this book greatly. Primrose Nevendon (Prim) is in her early twenties, she is intelligent and determined but feels her life is slipping her by. When she learns her father Archie, absent from her life since she was a young child, is missing in Cairo, she is determined to go out there and find him. He is a big wig in oil, and with Europe on the brink of war, there is a concern that he might have given away, whether freely or under duress, secrets about the oil pipeline. He is an amateur archaeologist and also runs/funds a small theatre in Cairo, which he promised his dead younger brother, Nim, he’d keep going no matter what.
Prim embarks on her quest and almost immediately runs into the handsome (of course) charming Harry Tavener. He is, he says, an employee of the British Council. This does not sit well with Prim who doubts he is telling the truth, but together as they gradually peel back the layers of Archie’s life they uncover conspiracy after conspiracy and put themselves in the path of danger. Nobody seems to be who they say they are. Everyone has secrets. I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that Prim finds her father but the scene in which she does is devastating and desolate in ways which Prim was not prepared for. Nor the reader come to that.
This is an intelligent well-written political thriller set in the complicated Middle East Arab/Jewish conflict in 1938 with such sharp place descriptions the reader can smell the diesel fumes, hear the cacophony of Cairo, and taste the sandy grit of the desert. If you like plots that twist and turn and well developed characters this book is for you.
Thanks to NetGalley and the author for sending me a copy of the book. This is an honest review after a full reading of the novel.

Much of this book follows the well proven formula of having a plucky young woman travelling abroad and engaging in dashing and dangerous adventures without much in the way of forward planning. Here we have Prim travelling to Cairo in the 1930's to look for her estranged father who has gone missing in mysterious circumstances. With the middle east a hotbed of conflict between the British , the Arabs and the Jews it is hard to know who to trust.
She is helped by Harry who is rather vague about which part of the British Government he works for.
The whole plot was fairly straightforward and a bit unrealistic but what raised the book above average for me was the excellent depiction of Egypt and the Middle East in these times. It also failed to have too sugar coated an ending with fairly dramatic emotional twists near the end. The characters were a bit one dimensional but this fitted in with easy reading nature of the book.
Thanks to NetGalley and Atlantic books for the ARC

Its 1938, Europe is on the brink of war. Primrose Nevendon lives a rather Bohemian lifestyle as a freelance stage designer with her Italian mother and a collection of artists and philospohers that call themselves (rather grandly) the Bevern Fraternity. Her father Archie left them when she was small and she has barely seen or heard from him since. He is now a director of Anglo-Levantine Oil in Cairo whilst also running his late brother Nim's theatre.
Then two Special Branch police officers come calling, Archie has gone missing in Egypt and they are concerned that he might have sold secrets about British oil pipelines and the like to the Germans and/or Italians, especially since Prim herself was briefly a member of the British Union of Fascists until she realised that they were just as bad as the Communists and didn't really want change for the masses - just for the leaders.
Prim decides to travel to Egypt to find her father. On the long air journey she meets Harry Taverner, ostensibly with the British Council to bring British arts and science to Egypt, but in reality to babysit Prim and see whether they can find Archie (or if she knows where he is). Also on board is Mike Luzzatto, an American Jew who deals in real estate, although his real motive is buying land for Jewish settlement.
When she gets to Cairo, Prim discovers that there are a lot of people looking for Archie, some of them not at all nice. The theatre manager was kidnapped, tortured, and murdered to find some clues as to where he might be - but no-one knows.
In their attempts to find Archie, Prim and Harry are drawn into the conflict between the Arabs and the Jews, and both sides' antipathy towards the British. It seems as though Archie may have been trying to play both sides and it spectacularly backfired.
The author had clearly done a lot of historical research but honestly most of the time it felt like a bewildering hotchpotch of politics and all I really got out of it was that all sides were pretty unpleasant, prepared to sanction absolutely anything to the cause as collateral damage - that may also have been a product of the times where extremism was rampant across the world. The story itself got subsumed in the politics and felt like a bit of a damp squib, I was left with the feeling of 'so what?'.
I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley.

A follow up to Berlin Duet where we met Harry Taverner for the first time. Here he is again in Cairo helping Prim find her missing father. This is more than a spy story, it’s a thriller and excellent recounting of historical facts of a pre-war Egypt. You can feel the heat, the smells and atmosphere pounding at you through the pages. It builds to an interesting climax, nobody is who they seem, trust no one! An excellent story and I look forward to any follow ups of Harry’s war!
Thank you to Netgalley the author and publishers for an arc in exchange for an honest review

In Cairo Gambit, author S.W.Perry manages to evoke the heat and heady atmosphere of 1938 Cairo in his completely immersive writing. I loved Berlin Duet, also by Perry, and this is another absorbing and brilliant book about love, secrets, compassion and single mindedness. Intrigue, spies, British colonialism and the seething tensions between the Arabs and Jews forms a tense backdrop to one woman’s quest to find her lost father. Lovely Harry Taverner reappears (in an earlier incarnation than Berlin Duet), adding charm and loyalty to the plot. This is more than a spy thriller- characters have depth and motive, the political is explained and the arrogant disdain and sense of entitlement of the British exquisitely described and shown. I liked Prim’s courage and sense of self as she searches for her father, knowing that she might not like what she finds. I can’t wait for Perry’s next book and hope I meet Prim or Harry again.

Pre WW2 Egypt never looked better.
"Cairo Gambit" opens in Egypt, in April 1938, where a shooting in a small theatre causes the local police to wonder if war has broken out between rival political groups. When news of the shooting reaches young Primrose Nevendon, residing in Britain, and she learns the theatre was run by her estranged father, who has subsequently disappeared, she decides on a whim to visit Cairo and search for him.
Upon arriving in Cairo, Prim finds herself way out of her depth, and only with the assistance of a young man she met on the flight over, does she start to find her feet. The young man is Harry Taverner, known to readers of the previous book "Berlin Duet", as an officer of the British Intelligence service. Very quickly, Prim and Harry are drawn into a complex and confusing situation, where neither the Police or the British Embassy are willing to help in her search. As the pair slowly uncover clues and follow leads missed by the authorities, it becomes clear her father was involved in some dubious dealing. The story moves along at a brisk pace, slowing only to savour some excellent scenes between Prim and Harry, Prim and her father's employer, and her father's housekeeper. We also learn a little more about Harry Taverner, too.
"Cairo Gambit" is everything fans of Harry Taverner's previous adventure will love. The backdrop of pre-war Cairo is presented in full bloom - the sights and smells, the noise and bustle, the hotels, the clubs, and the wheelers and the dealers. The reader learns much about the state of Egypt in the years leading up to WW2, when Britain, the Arab nations, and the Jewish people were all vying for their right to settle or govern. We also witness the last vestiges of the British Empire- the boozy Club lunches, the garden parties, and the Victorian values. Prim is everything they find offensive, and revels in it.
This book is part thriller, part spy story, and part historical adventure, bringing to life the years leading up to WW2 in North Africa. Fans will love it, and like me, will be hoping top see more of Harry Taverner. Thoroughly recommended.