The body of a teenage girl is discovered in a cistern deep below the city of Istanbul. For the Turkish police force’s most talented officer, Inspector Çetin Ikmen, this is a difficult case. The girl was his daughter’s friend and her attire, that of a nineteenth-century Ottoman, offers no easy explanation.With his promise of justice to the dead girl’s mother still fresh on his lips, Ikmen is suddenly taken off the case and reassigned to the kidnapping of an ageing movie star’s wife. The star is hiding something and so, Ikmen fears, are his superiors. A powerful secret exists in the labyrinthine city; one which those on either side of the law will do anything to prevent surfacing...

nspectors Cetin Ikmen and Mehmet Suleyman from Istanbul are sent to a policing conference in Detroit, but little can prepare them for the corruption that lies at its heart. When Ezekial Goins, an elderly man of Turkish descent approaches them to crack the long-unsolved murder of his son, a quiet trip takes a far more sinister turn. As they delve deeper into the case, the pair find themselves immersed in a terrifying world of inter-gang drug war and racial prejudice that puts them in mortal danger, and forces Ikmen to confront some demons of his own...Review"Intriguing . . . all will appreciate the skill with which Nadel depicts the tensions underlying contemporary Turkish society as well as her ability to make each of her characters fully human."  —Publishers Weekly on Arabesk"Add Inspector Ikmen and his motley crew to the growing list of outstanding fictional cops plying their trades across all parts of Europe and Asia, which have become hotbeds of police procedural excellence."  —Booklist on Belshazzar's DaughterAbout the AuthorBarbara Nadel received the Crime Writers' Association Silver Dagger for Deadly Web. Other titles in the Inspector Ikmen mysteries series include Belshazzar's Daughter, Death by Design, and The Ottoman Cage. She is also the author of the Francis Hancock series.

The twenty-seventh mystery featuring Inspector İkmen, star of BBC Two's gripping crime drama series The Turkish Detective. Inspector Mehmet Süleyman is on holiday in Romania when his distant cousin calls. Nurettin Süleyman has bought the Wooden Library, an ancient building in Istanbul once owned by their ancestor. He needs help cataloguing its priceless contents and who better for the job than Mehmet's old friend Çetin İkmen? As İkmen sets to work, he detects a terrible smell pervading the library that leads to the discovery of a rotting corpse. The dead body is that of Senol Ulusoy, the man who sold Nurettin the library . . .A long-running feud between the two families comes to light, as does the bitter rivalry between the three Ulusoy brothers, fuelled by their father's cruel manipulation. Then pathologist Arto Sarkissian makes a shocking discovery that turns this case on its head, and Süleyman's detective team must dig deep to reveal a truth that is rooted in the past as well as the present . . .Praise for Barbara Nadel's İkmen mysteries:'Complex and beguiling: a Turkish delight' Mick Herron'İkmen is one of modern crime fiction's true heroes, complex yet likeable, and the city he inhabits - Istanbul - is just as fascinating' The Times'Barbara Nadel's distinctive Istanbul-set Inspector İkmen thrillers combine brightly coloured scene setting with deliciously tortuous plots' Guardian