Part homage to Agatha Christie, Fatal Tears is a deftly entertaining novel set amidst the colour and hurly-burly of 1920s Egypt.

The young Egyptologist Rupert Winfield has escaped his family and career to become a tour guide on a Nile paddle steamer. The Great War is now a decade ago and well-heeled Europeans and Americans are once again flocking to Egypt to see the country's famous monuments.

For Winfield, his assembled party seems at first to be the usual ragbag of the ignorant, the racist, and the feckless, but he soon discovers that some of the guests on board have rather more to them than meets the eye. Who exactly, he wonders, is the mysterious Sebastian Printon, and why do accidents keep happening whenever he is around? And then there's the handsome, war-wounded doctor, for whom Winfield begins to feel more than just a passing interest—but even he, it seems, has his secrets.

Born in Islington, North London, Stuart Fifield grew up in Uganda and Kenya where his father was a civil servant.

He obtained a Master's degree in Music and then carved a successful career as a concert soloist, singing baritone repertoire. He later ran a successful interior design consultancy, before retraining as a music teacher.

Today he lives with his partner in Rotherfield, East Sussex, where he divides his time between writing, performing, teaching and travelling. This is his debut novel.