Felaheen is the third book in Jon Courtenay Grimwood's Arabesk trilogy. It's a highly original series and one which maintains its originality even in the third visit to the author's alternate 21st Century.

This is a world where the Ottoman Empire still exists, although in its dying days. Following an attempt on the life of the Moncef, Emir of Tunis, Ashraf Bey is contacted by the Emir's security chief who requests his help in tracking down the would-be assassin.

Bey, though, is a troubled man, his head inhabited by 'The Fox', a mysterious voice that attempts to guide his actions. He declines to help find the attacker (even though the Emir is said to be his father, a fact he does not easily believe), and he disappears from his normal life--being drawn to Tunis anyway, although for reasons of his own, which he himself seems unaware of, guided as he is by the voice in his head.

This is a complex book. The world the characters inhabit is richly realised and multi-layered. This is a book that requires concentration. But that concentration is rewarded throughout. There are many delights in this series and Grimwood's imagining.

There are sub-stories running alongside Ashraf Bey's troubled journeying. His niece obtains money through less than totally honest methods and sets off on her own adventures. Kashif Pasha, the Emir's oldest son is in New York living the life of a playboy. And in a series of flashbacks we hear of Sally, a young westerner and her encounter with Wu Tang and subsequent journeying into the desert towards the camp of the, then, Prince Moncef.

Like previously in this series, the book starts at the end of the sequence, giving the briefest snippet of how things end, before jumping back in time six weeks and telling the story of how events lead Ashraf Bey to the situation in Chapter One. This technique of instantly hooking the reader into the story, having some knowledge of the outcome just adds a little anticipation to the plot. And handled as well as it is here makes an extremely effective plot device it serves to instantly grip the reader once more into this alternate reality.

This is also a Moslem dominated story. It's a brave thing to be writing with the world's events as they are. It should not put anyone off reading the book. The world presented here is vivid, the places are thoroughly detailed, allowing the reader to fully visualise the surroundings, yet without the over-labouring the point, and clogging up the wheels of the plot with excessive description.

This has been a series of consistently high quality. Throughout the three books, Grimwood does not let up, there not being a moment of downtime, no sections of padding. This is writing of a high standard.

Synopsis
Detective. Diplomat. Uncle. Killer... Ashraf bey has been many things since escaping his grey prison life in Seatlle for the infinitely more complex world of North Africa

Now settled comfortably into the city of El Iskandriya - perhaps too comfortably - Raf divides his time between his office, looking after his ten-year-old niece and the crumbling palace he owns on Boulevard Sherif. But the question of who he really is still nags as sharp as a broken tooth and that answer lies in the city of Tunis, with a man whoi might just be his father.

With the bleak, noir atmospehre of Raymond Chandler, the living, breathing background of the Alexandria Quartet and a unique charismatic detective who is 100% Jon Courtenay Grimwood, this is page turning fiction at it's best.