Overview
"A young man's body is found in a secret apartment in Istanbul. The youth's limbs are atrophied and covered with injection marks. The windows in the flat are nailed shut and the victim has never been seen leaving or entering the flat. The only person sighted at the building over the years has been a well-dressed Armenian whose identity is unknown. Has the boy been kept prisoner? If so, by whom? And how did he die?" Inspector Cetin Ikmen of the Turkish police force and Armenian forensic pathologist Arto Sarkissian have frequently worked together. They are close friends too, despite the differences in their religion, race, income, and lifestyles. But as they join forces to investigate this case, Ikmen senses an uneasiness in his friend's manner that he does not understand. Meanwhile, Ikmen has problems aplenty at home with his elderly father suffering from dementia and his nine children all clamoring for his undivided attention. And if that isn't enough, one of his team is developing a crush on another, which does not bode well for the case at all.Synopsis
British Praise for Belshazzar's Daughter:
"Intriguing, exotic whodunnit set in the scruffy Turkish township of Balat...Local colour judiciously applied and ethnic differences (White Russian refugees, uxorious Turks, fraught British expats) skilfully explored...A first novel: exciting, accomplished and original."
- Literary Review
"Best crime fiction by a new writer was Barbara Nadel's Belshazzar's Daughter. Set in Istanbul, with a battered, cynical and credible Turkish cop, and a great blooming baroque plot (ditto talent)."
- Books of the Year, Independent Weekend Review
"An unusual and very well written first novel...Although the murder mystery is intriguing, it is the characters who make this book so successful. The police team and their little feuds, the English teacher besotted with his mysterious Turkish girlfriend, and, most memorably, the chain-smoking little Inspector Ikmen, with his eight children and pregnant wife, contribute to this portrayal of an exotically different city."
- Sunday Telegraph
"This is an extraordinarily interesting first novel: the idea which drives its plot is an intriguing one; the Istanbul background is richly and thickly layered; the diverse cast of characters exhibits most of the psychoses known to man; while Çetin Ikmen is a detective one hopes to see more of."
- Evening Standard
"This Istanbul-set-thriller combines a multi-layered description of its locale with an equally complex plot...Nadel presents a fully fledged psychological understanding worthy of the best of the genre and her plotting is satisfyingly labyrinthine. Inspector lkmen too, is a highly unusual protagonist, characterized in a way that owes little to her predecessors. An evocative and idiosyncratic debut novel."
- Good Book Guide
"In Inspector Ikmen, Nadel has created a sympathetic sleuth. Supported by his handsome side-kick, intellectual father and plaintive wife, Ikmen should go far."
- Scotsman
Kirkus Reviews
In modern-day Turkey, layers of mystery surround the discovery of a teenaged boy's body in an unlikely place. Istanbul police are called by an elderly woman to check out a tall, imposing house next door because the front door's been left ajar for several hours. In this affluent neighborhood-the house shares a wall with the famous Topkapi Museum-that alone is cause for suspicion. Responding, pretty Sergeant Farskagolu and taciturn little Constable Cohen see scant evidence of habitation except on a top floor. There they find a beautiful young man, dead of an apparent drug overdose, the windows in the room nailed shut. Inspector Cetin Ikmen (Belshazzar's Daughter, 2003) is as precise as Hercule Poirot in approaching the case, but there are numerous blind alleys. The owner of the house reports that no tenant lived on the top floor, a pair of distraught parents with a missing son who fits the corpse's description don't identify it as their loved one, estimates on age and nationality keep changing. A significant break comes when the victim is linked to an underground network of young men for sexual hire. The drama of the investigation is rivaled by shifting relationships among Ikmen and his team. Most significantly, unhappily married Sergeant Suleyman comes clean with Farskagolu about his long-unrequited love. Fascinating depiction of Turkish culture, tidbits of history, and a decent whodunit.