Jon Courtenay Grimwood

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BOOKS BY THIS AUTHOR


Title: Pashazade: The First Arabesk: Description:
Ashraf Bey is not who he seems - a rich Ottoman aristocrat to whom the Iskandryia of a rather different 21st century is more or less his oyster - nor is he simply what he thinks he is - a minor street criminal shipped off to North Africa when he fell foul of his employers. Accused yet again of murders he did not commit, he finds out on the run that he is better than he thinks he is - smarter and more capable and also someone whom people trust and love.

Title: Felaheen: The Third Arabesk: Description:
Detective. Diplomat. Uncle. Killer. Ashraf Bey has been many things since arriving in El Iskandryia from Seattle. One thing he hasn't been, as yet, is a son to Moncef, Emir of Tunis - the father Raf has still to meet. And now it may be too late, since the rumours that don't have Emir Moncef escaping assassination have him hovering on the edge of death. It seems Raf has his own part in an unfolding political crisis.

Title: Redrobe: Description:
Ex-assassin Axl Borja has agreed to do one last hit - only he hasn't told his gun yet. Cardinal Santo Ducque faces political ruin if he can't regain the Vatican's missing billions. Mai's a Japanese kinderwhore held hostage on a space habitat. As they collide their actions could change the world.

Title: Effendi: The Second Arabesk: Description:
Among many other things, Ashraf Bey is a fugitive from the US justice system (definitely); son of the Emir of Tunis (possibly); and chief of detectives in the El Iskandryian police force (apparently). Small wonder that he's a little confused... Raf's ex-fiance Zara still doesn't want to see him, so she says. His nine-year-old niece is busy doing things with computers that are strictly illegal. And when the city suddenly starts to fall apart and Zara's father is accused of mass-murder, Raf begins to learn the true cost of loyalty... Ashraf Bey must become both saviour and avenger. It's not an easy trick, but someone has to do it...

Title: Lucifer's Dragon: Description:
The hugely rich daughter of a mafia boss rebuilds Venice - in the Pacific. A century later, the daughter of Count Ryuchi slips out to the levels to play Lucifer's Dragon, a 3D trawl through the apocalypse. It's a virtual world - but the welter of carnage that's about to take place is all too real.

Title: Neoaddix: Description:
Alex Gibson is an evidence chaser on the run in London. One of his eyes is a Zeiss eyecam containing enough data to blow open a messy murder trial. Unfortunately for him, two other people want this evidence. The only person who can help Alex is Johnnie T, the leader of the neoAddix.

Title: Remix: Description:
Steel-eating mutant bacteria have reduced Europe to isolated, barbarous rubble and Nazi cossacks are at the gates of Imperial Paris. LizAlec, adopted daughter of Lady Claire, icily glamourous head of Imperial security, is kidnapped from a lunar Arrivals Lounge on her way to finishing school, and rescued by a one-lunged outcast who keeps his best friend's head in a coolbox. Everyone wants a piece of LizAlec--her mother's rivals, a murderous tele-evangelist who lives in a space ark, her burned-out cyborg rock star boyfriend, and whatever it is that lurks in her own body and makes her surprisingly competent in emergencies. Grimwood has made a modest career out of the realisation that cyberpunk long ago ceased to be the messianic next big thing in sf and became a set of gestures and a marketing ploy. The intelligent absurdities of his plotting, a vein of perverse eroticism, and his love affair with the brand-named impedimenta of an improbable high-tech future, add up to superior brain candy; a caper thriller with ideas in orbit above its station. There is a place for glossy fluff in sf, and Grimwood occupies it with real competence.

Title: Stamping Butterflies: Description:
Stamping Butterflies tells the story of two dreamers. One, a would be assassin in tomorrow's Marrakech. He aims to kill the US President and holds in his head the secret to a faster-than-light drive. The other, a Chinese Emperor, ruler of 148 billion people on an immense Dyson sphere thousands of years in the future. Each believes they are dreaming the other. One must change the future, one must change the past. Both have only days to live.

Title: Pashazade: The First Arabesk: Description:
Britain's master of the alternative future brings us his finest work yet - Durrell's ALEXANDRIA QUARTET as science fiction El Iskandria is the most famous and cosmopolitan city of Ottoman Egypt in the 21st century. Ashraf Bey travels there to escape an American prison, but ends up the main suspect in a murder, hated by the woman he is supposed to marry and responsible for the welfare of a nine-year-old cousin...In a world where Germany won the First World War, in a world where the Ottoman Empire still dominates the Middle East, in a world where Zeppelins drone overhead...Ashraf Bey has to survive and discover answers to questions about himself and the city he has come to live in. The answers may be factually accurate, but are they true? Excerpted from Pashazade by Jon Courtenay Grimwood. Copyright © 2002. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. 6th July The sound of fountains came in stereo. A deep splash fromthe courtyard below and a lighter trickle from the next room,where open arches cut in a wall over-looking the courtyard hadmarble balustrades stretched between matching pillars.It was that kind of house.Old, historic, near-derelict in places.‘Ambient temp eighty-one Fahrenheit, humidity sixty-twoper cent . . .’ The American spoke clearly, reading the datafrom the face of his watch, then glanced through a smashedwindow to what little he could see of the sky outside.‘Passing cloud, no direct sunlight.’Dropping clumsily onto one knee, Felix Abrinsky touchedthe marble floor with nicotine-stained fingers, confirming tohimself that this statement was correct. The tiles werewarm butnot hot. No latent heat had been stored up from that morning’ssunshine to radiate back into the afternoon air.Bizarrely, it took Felix less effort to stand than it had doneto kneel, though he needed to pause to catch his breath all thesame. And the silver-ringed hand that came up to wipe sweatfrom his forehead only succeeded in smearing grease acrosshis scalp and down his thinning ponytail.Police regulations demanded he wear a face mask, surgicalgloves and – in his case – a sweatband to stop himself fromaccidentally polluting biological evidence. But Felix was Chiefof Detectives and so far as he was concerned that meant hecould approach the crime scene how he liked, which wasloose, casual and lateral. Not to mention semi-drunk. All thevirtues that first got him thrown out of the police in LosAngeles.Besides, if you wanted to talk about should have been, thenhe should have been on holiday. And he would have managedit, too, if this particular buck hadn’t been bumped up the lineso fast it practically hit the wall parking itself right outside hisoffice door.The body in the chair was fresh, still warm to his touch.Stiffness had set in to the arms – but then, rigor happened fastwhen a victim was borderline anorexic. And even without thewoman’s thinness there was North Africa’s heat to add into theequation. Heat always upped the rate at which rigor gripped acorpse.On his arrival Felix had considered obtaining an immediatebody temperature. But habit made him do the crime-scene grabsfirst, then work a grid through the victim’s office, tweezeringup clues. And technically, since she was obviously dead, he’dalready broken his own regulations by checking under her jawfor a carotid pulse.‘Covering the body prior to site shots.’Some cities used electronic observers, 360 degree fish-eyevids, wired for movement and sound. El Iskandryia used thehuman kind, when it bothered to use observers at all. Thesilksuit Felix had selected stood in the doorway, doing exactlywhat he’d been told, which was shut up and stay out ofthe way.From a foil packet Felix extracted a sheet of tissue-thin gauzedesigned to protect the woman’s modesty in death, as surelyas a scarf round her head would have hidden her hair on thestreets in life. Except there was no scarf, because the womanhad been stabbed in her own house, at her own desk, in herown office . . .‘Starting location shots,’ said the fat man and lifted an oldSpeed Graphic. The camera was linked to his even more ancientLAPD-issue chronograph, which would back up each shot as itwas taken, just as the camera would automatically stamp time,date and orientation across the bottom edge of each new shot.15.30:July 6:SouthSouthWest.All the same, Felix dictated a description of what he wasdoing, working fast to photograph the little office from everyangle. Only when this was done could he start work on thebody.‘Exposure five. Al-Mansur madersa. Upstairs. Interior. Westwall and corner of office taken from door. Speed GraphicDigilux. Fifty-millimetre lens. K400-equivalence.’The dictation did no more than tell the court what camerahad been used, what the shot showed and what the light waslike: something the camera readouts told them anyway. But he’dlearned his craft back when Speed Graphics still took acetateand defence attorneys jumped on any conflict of technicalinformation, no matter how small. And besides, Felix spokenot really to his camera or watch but to himself.These days defence attorneys weren’t an issue. If the Chiefof Detectives said someone had committed a crime that wasusually good enough for a judge. The suspect went down.Unfortunately it had taken Felix a few months to realize thisand there were three cases from his early days in El Iskandryiawhich still gave him sleepless nights – four cases, if he wasbeing unusually hard on himself.‘Exposure eleven. Al-Mansur madersa. Upstairs. Interior.Open door to office, taken from broken mashrabiya windowin south wall adjacent to Rue Sherif . . .’Mashrabiyas were, originally, shaded balconies where waterjugs could be left to cool. But the term had long since cometo signify both the balcony and the ornately carved screenthat hid those in the balcony from the street below. Marblewas commonplace for the screen, as was gilded or paintedwood.The smashed mashrabiya at the al-Mansur madersa had beencarved two hundred years before from a single slab of alabasterand now lay in shards on the floor, apparently kicked in fromoutside. That the balcony was fifteen feet above a traffic-laden street only made the break-in more unlikely. Unless one factoredin the Thiergarten who apparently could move unseen,kill silently and climb walls like flies . . .Felix sighed. Whatever else Berlin had to buy for its agentsabroad, their deadly reputation came free. An extract from Pashazade, copyright © Jon Courtenay Grimwood, 2001 --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Title: Effendi: The Second Arabesk: Description:
The brilliant sequel to the critically acclaimed PASHAZADE Among many other things, Ashraf Bey is a fugitive from the US justice system (definitely); son of the Emir of Tunis (possibly); and chief of detectives in the El Iskandryian police force (apparently). Small wonder that he's a little confused. Raf's ex-fiance Zara still doesn't want to see him, so she says. His nine-year-old niece is busy doing things with computers that are strictly illegal. And when the city suddenly starts to fall apart and Zara's father is accused of mass-murder, Raf begins to learn the true cost of loyalty. As the US, France and Germany try to dominate both the present and future of the Middle East in this alternate 21st century - as they have the past - Ashraf Bey must become both saviour and avenger. It's not an easy trick, but someone has to do it... Excerpted from Effendi by Jon Courtenay Grimwood. Copyright © 2002. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Prologue 27th October‘Of course,’ said Ashraf Bey. ‘We could just kill the defendantand be done with it . . .’ He let his suggestion hang in the coldair. And when no one replied, Raf shrugged. ‘Okay,’ he said.‘Maybe not.’It was getting late and autumn rain fell steadily on thedarkened streets outside, while inside, sat around their table,Raf’s visitors continued to chase the same argument in tightcircles. A Grand Jury was in session. If three judges plus asenior detective in a damp, third-storey office could be calledanything so imposing, which seemed doubtful.‘An accident,’ suggested Raf. ‘The steps in this precinct arenotoriously slippery. Or perhaps suicide . . . Shoe laces, anunfortunately overlooked belt . . . ? One of my people wouldhave to be reprimanded obviously.’Raf looked from Graf Ernst von B, the German boy, to a sourfacedpolitician from New Jersey who insisted everyone call herSenator Liz, neither of whom met his eye. There was also anelderly French oil magnate, but he sat so quietly Raf mostly forgothe was there. Which was probably the man’s intention.‘Alternatively,’ said Raf, ‘I could have him taken out to thecourtyard and shot. Or, if you like, we could lose the bodyaltogether and just pretend he never existed. One of the oldGreek cisterns should take care of that.’They didn’t like this idea either; but then the young detectivewith the Armani wrap-rounds and drop-pearl earring hadn’texpected them to . . . He was acting as magister to their judges.And no one as yet, least of all him, seemed very sure what thatactually entailed.‘Justice,’ Senator Liz said loudly, ‘must be seen to be done.’Her voice remained as irritating as when the session beganseveral hours earlier.‘Lord Hewart,’ Raf pulled the quote from memory. ‘One of theworst judges in history. And even he never suggested putting aNorth African trial on American television.’‘That’s not . . .’ Ernst von B’s protest died as Raf flipped upa hand.‘Let’s hear what St Cloud thinks,’ he said and turned to theFrenchman. ‘Do you think justice needs to be televised?’‘Me?’ Astolphe de St Cloud slid a cigar case from his insidepocket. And though the iridescence of its lizard skin wasbeautiful, even by the light of a single hurricane lamp, whatthey all noticed was the enamel clasp: an eagle spreading itswings, while jagged thunderbolts fell from between the bird’ssharp claws.As if anyone there needed reminding that St Cloud wouldhave been Prince Imperial, if only his father had bothered tomarry his mother.‘It depends,’ said St Cloud, ‘on what Your Excellency meansby justice . . .’ Shuffling a handful of prints, he stopped at onewhich showed a young girl with most of her stomach missing.‘If we decide the evidence is convincing enough, then obviouslythe prisoner must stand trial. Like Senator Liz, my only reservationis that, perhaps, El Iskandryia is not quite . . .’Raf caught the wry amusement in the Marquis’ voice andglanced round the room, trying to see it through the eyes ofa man whose own business empire was run from a Moorishpalace overlooking Tunisia’s Cap Bon; and who now foundhimself in a third-floor office, without electricity, on the cornerof Boulevard Champollion and Rue Riyad Pasha, in a tattyfour-square government block built around a huge courtyardin best Nationalist Revival style.At street level the exterior walls to Iskandryia’s Police HQwere faced with cheap sheets of reconstituted marble, whileglass hid the exterior of the two floors above. Black glassobviously. The architect had been on loan from Moscow.It showed.As for the level of comfort on offer . . . A fire burned ina bucket in the centre of the floor, filled with logs from adying carob. Apparently, the tree had been not quite aliveand not yet dead for as long as even Raf’s oldest detectivescould remember.Two men from uniform had hacked it off just above the roots,using fire-axes. Now chunks of its carcass spat and spluttered asthin flames danced across the top of their makeshift brazier.Directly above the brazier, suspended from the centre of theceiling like an inverted red mushroom, hung a state-of-the-artsmoke detector. Like almost everything else in Iskandryia sincethe EMP bomb, it no longer worked.And behind Raf’s head, a window unit that once adjustedelectronically to lighting conditions had been rendered smokefriendly, also with a fire-axe. Through its shattered centre cameflecks of rain and a salt wind that blew in from the EasternHarbour.‘Justice,’ said Raf, ‘is whatever we decide . . .’ Copyright © Jon Courtenay Grimwood, 2001 --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Title: Felaheen (arabesk): Description:
Detective. Diplomat. Uncle. Killer. Ashraf Bey has been many things since arriving in El Iskandryia from Seattle. One thing he hasn't been, as yet, is a son to Moncef, Emir of Tunis - the father Raf has still to meet. Of course, Raf doesn't believe the Emir is his father anyway. (Given his mother's insistence that he's the son of a Swedish hitch hiker). And now it may be too late, since the rumours that don't have Emir Moncef escaping assassination have him hovering on the edge of death. Despite refusing a plea for help from the Emir's chief of security, Raf still finds himself being drawn towards Tunis. It seems he has his own part in an unfolding political crisis that began decades earlier with US anti-globalisation riots and the Emir's refusal to ratify the 2005 UN Accord on Biotechnology.

Title: Pashazade: The First Arabesk: Description:
Cool SF thriller - Durrell's ALEXANDRIA QUARTET as science fiction El Iskandria is the most famous and cosmopolitan city of Ottoman Egypt in the 21st century. Ashraf Bey travels there to escape an American prison, but ends up the main suspect in a murder, hated by the woman he is supposed to marry and responsible for the welfare of a nine-year-old cousin...In a world where Germany won the First World War, in a world where the Ottoman Empire still dominates the Middle East, in a world where Zeppelins drone overhead...Ashraf Bey has to survive and discover answers to questions about himself and the city he has come to live in. The answers may be factually accurate, but are they true? First of a series which is an SF version of Lawrence Durrell's ALEXANDRIA QUARTET, in which El Iskandria is as much a character as any human. Excerpted from Pashazade by Jon Courtenay Grimwood. Copyright © 2002. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. 6th July The sound of fountains came in stereo. A deep splash fromthe courtyard below and a lighter trickle from the next room,where open arches cut in a wall over-looking the courtyard hadmarble balustrades stretched between matching pillars.It was that kind of house.Old, historic, near-derelict in places.‘Ambient temp eighty-one Fahrenheit, humidity sixty-twoper cent . . .’ The American spoke clearly, reading the datafrom the face of his watch, then glanced through a smashedwindow to what little he could see of the sky outside.‘Passing cloud, no direct sunlight.’Dropping clumsily onto one knee, Felix Abrinsky touchedthe marble floor with nicotine-stained fingers, confirming tohimself that this statement was correct. The tiles werewarm butnot hot. No latent heat had been stored up from that morning’ssunshine to radiate back into the afternoon air.Bizarrely, it took Felix less effort to stand than it had doneto kneel, though he needed to pause to catch his breath all thesame. And the silver-ringed hand that came up to wipe sweatfrom his forehead only succeeded in smearing grease acrosshis scalp and down his thinning ponytail.Police regulations demanded he wear a face mask, surgicalgloves and – in his case – a sweatband to stop himself fromaccidentally polluting biological evidence. But Felix was Chiefof Detectives and so far as he was concerned that meant hecould approach the crime scene how he liked, which wasloose, casual and lateral. Not to mention semi-drunk. All thevirtues that first got him thrown out of the police in LosAngeles.Besides, if you wanted to talk about should have been, thenhe should have been on holiday. And he would have managedit, too, if this particular buck hadn’t been bumped up the lineso fast it practically hit the wall parking itself right outside hisoffice door.The body in the chair was fresh, still warm to his touch.Stiffness had set in to the arms – but then, rigor happened fastwhen a victim was borderline anorexic. And even without thewoman’s thinness there was North Africa’s heat to add into theequation. Heat always upped the rate at which rigor gripped acorpse.On his arrival Felix had considered obtaining an immediatebody temperature. But habit made him do the crime-scene grabsfirst, then work a grid through the victim’s office, tweezeringup clues. And technically, since she was obviously dead, he’dalready broken his own regulations by checking under her jawfor a carotid pulse.‘Covering the body prior to site shots.’Some cities used electronic observers, 360 degree fish-eyevids, wired for movement and sound. El Iskandryia used thehuman kind, when it bothered to use observers at all. Thesilksuit Felix had selected stood in the doorway, doing exactlywhat he’d been told, which was shut up and stay out ofthe way.From a foil packet Felix extracted a sheet of tissue-thin gauzedesigned to protect the woman’s modesty in death, as surelyas a scarf round her head would have hidden her hair on thestreets in life. Except there was no scarf, because the womanhad been stabbed in her own house, at her own desk, in herown office . . .‘Starting location shots,’ said the fat man and lifted an oldSpeed Graphic. The camera was linked to his even more ancientLAPD-issue chronograph, which would back up each shot as itwas taken, just as the camera would automatically stamp time,date and orientation across the bottom edge of each new shot.15.30:July 6:SouthSouthWest.All the same, Felix dictated a description of what he wasdoing, working fast to photograph the little office from everyangle. Only when this was done could he start work on thebody.‘Exposure five. Al-Mansur madersa. Upstairs. Interior. Westwall and corner of office taken from door. Speed GraphicDigilux. Fifty-millimetre lens. K400-equivalence.’The dictation did no more than tell the court what camerahad been used, what the shot showed and what the light waslike: something the camera readouts told them anyway. But he’dlearned his craft back when Speed Graphics still took acetateand defence attorneys jumped on any conflict of technicalinformation, no matter how small. And besides, Felix spokenot really to his camera or watch but to himself.These days defence attorneys weren’t an issue. If the Chiefof Detectives said someone had committed a crime that wasusually good enough for a judge. The suspect went down.Unfortunately it had taken Felix a few months to realize thisand there were three cases from his early days in El Iskandryiawhich still gave him sleepless nights – four cases, if he wasbeing unusually hard on himself.‘Exposure eleven. Al-Mansur madersa. Upstairs. Interior.Open door to office, taken from broken mashrabiya windowin south wall adjacent to Rue Sherif . . .’Mashrabiyas were, originally, shaded balconies where waterjugs could be left to cool. But the term had long since cometo signify both the balcony and the ornately carved screenthat hid those in the balcony from the street below. Marblewas commonplace for the screen, as was gilded or paintedwood.The smashed mashrabiya at the al-Mansur madersa had beencarved two hundred years before from a single slab of alabasterand now lay in shards on the floor, apparently kicked in fromoutside. That the balcony was fifteen feet above a traffic-laden street only made the break-in more unlikely. Unless one factoredin the Thiergarten who apparently could move unseen,kill silently and climb walls like flies . . .Felix sighed. Whatever else Berlin had to buy for its agentsabroad, their deadly reputation came free. An extract from Pashazade, copyright © Jon Courtenay Grimwood, 2001