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Overview
A Turkish worker is stabbed to death in Frankfurt's red-light district - certainly no reason for the police to work overtime. Kemal Kayankaya, however, has a different attitude. A 26-year-old of Turkish birth but German upbringing, he doesn't speak Turkish but looks it, has a German passport and first-hand experience of resentment against foreigners. He is also a private investigator, hired to find the killer and the motive for the crime. Like his literary forefathers Philip Marlowe and Sam Spade, he is a loner, but as a Turk, not because he has an option. Yet he is not unarmed; with an irreverent and hilarious sense of humor Kayakankaya goes about his search, all the while drinking too much, encountering obnoxious policemen and easy women. After twists and turns he finally runs into a drug ring built on the exploitation of Turkish immigrants. The influence of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett on Jakob Arjouni is impossible to miss; the plot moves quickly, the action thrills, the characters are unforgettable and the milieu is painted so realistically that it immediately comes to life for the reader.Editorials
Publishers Weekly -
Like many a translated European crime novel, this American edition comes with overblown references to Chandler and Hammett and is replete with idiosyncratic prose stylings that, whether deliberate or artifacts of the translation from the German, serve to perplex rather than illuminate. Ahmed Hamul was a Turkish laborer stabbed to death in Frankfurt and suspected by his family of being a heroin dealer. Kemal Kayankaya is the shamus, born in Turkey but raised in Germany, hired by the victim's wife to find the truth about the killing. Arjouni leads his readers through the dark center of early-'80s Frankfurt with its strippers, hookers and ersatz Americana in the shape of fried chicken and cheeseburgers. The language, while briskly utilized, is often stretched (a refrigerator resembles a pack of cigarettes beside the large body of a barmaid) and every genre cliche about the hard-drinking, smart-mouthed gumshoe is shamelessly overemployed. Frankfurt might as well be Pittsburgh, and Kayankaya a TV creation. (Oct.)Library Journal
This entertaining, fast-paced mystery features private investigator Kemal Kayankaya, a German citizen of Turkish origin. Ahmed Hamul is murdered in Frankfurt's red light district. His wife wants to know why, so she hires Kayankaya. During his investigation, we glimpse the discrimination faced by foreigners in today's Germany. Though born in Turkey, Kayankaya was adopted by a German couple, is largely unfamiliar with Turkish life and customs, and speaks only German. Nevertheless, by virtue of his name and appearance, he comes into his share of abuse. He doesn't seem to benefit from his experience, however, forever sowing what he reaps. He thinks of two Oriental men, for example, as ``slit-eyed Minoltas'' and refers to an overweight woman as ``Madam Hulk.'' Something is no doubt lost in the translation, but the spirit is presumably the same. This enjoyable book exposes Americans to a slice of German culture they might not otherwise see. For public libraries that buy fiction in translation.-- Peggie Partello, Keene State Coll., N.H.Jay Freeman
The place is Frankfurt, and the time is 1983; the private eye is a 26-year-old ethnic Turk who is fully Germanized, and the case concerns the murder of a Turkish resident who was up to his ears in the drug trade. With just a tiny leap of imagination, one could visualize Sam Spade, Philip Marlowe, or Jake Gittes on the case in San Francisco or Los Angeles. In the person of Kemal Kayankaya, Arjouni has given us a private detective in the grand tradition. He displays all of the sardonic wit, dogged determination, and hard-edged integrity of his predecessors. The plot is a tightly woven gem interspersed with just enough local color to provide a glimpse of the seamy underbelly of the "new" Germany. Even for those not enamored of the genre, this book will provide pleasure, humor, and surprise.Kirkus Reviews
On his 26th birthday, p.i. Kemal Kayankaya—whose passport says German but whose face brands him as a despised Turk—tells Ilter Hamul that he'll try to find out who knifed her husband Ahmed, another Turk the police don't care about. In the three days before he wraps up the case, Kayankaya has time to identify Ilter's sister as a heroin addict, track down Ahmed's girlfriend (a pro in Frankfurt's red-light district), link his father-in-law's fatal accident three years earliler to an ingenious police coverup, and still survive beatings, gas attacks, and a close encounter with a Fiat. A blistering debut (the "first volume in the bestselling series"): outcast Kayankaya is a perfect hardboiled detective, and the plot has more zip than most of the home-grown competition. Welcome to America, Turk.Book Details
Published
April 25, 1994
Publisher
No Exit Press
Pages
191
Format
Hardcover
ISBN
9781874061212