Page Updated: 13/06/2005

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Barbara Nadel - Page 2

A Chemical Prison Belshazzar's Daughter

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First British Edition Headline (2000)

Paperback - Headline (2001)

A Chemical Prison
See Review by Bernard Knight - Author of the highly acclaimed Crowner John series set in Medieval Devon
See Review by Cath Staincliffe - Author of the highly acclaimed Sal Kilkenny Mysteries set on the Mean Streets of Manchester
Inspector Cetin Ikmen and forensic pathologist Arto Sarkissian have known each other since childhood and, despite the differences in their religions, races and salary levels, their work has always strengthened their friendship. When both are called to a body in an apartment close to the Topkapi Museum there’s no reason to think anything will change.
But the case is a strange one. The only person ever seen visiting the comfortable flat is a middle-aged Armenian; the dead boy’s limbs are atrophied, the flat’s windows nailed shut. The young man seems to have been a prisoner inside this gilded cage. But why? And for how long? And what, wonders Cetin, is making his old friend Arto, himself an Armenian, so uncomfortable?
`Even better than Nadel’s extraordinary first book, Belshazzar’s Daughter… more tightly organised, and the dark, Byzantine plot springs organically from the tensions of race and class... a depth and detail unusual in a crime novel’ London Evening Standard
‘Nadel’s Belshazzar’s Daughter made a considerable impact. With its brilliantly realised Istanbul setting and innovative protagonist, Inspector Ikmen, it was a hard act to follow. But she pulls off the trick triumphantly’ The Times
`My crime reader is raving about this author’ Bookseller

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Paperback - Headline (1999)

First British Edition Headline (1999)

Belshazzar's Daughter
When an elderly man is murdered in Istanbul’s decrepit Jewish quarter, it seems frighteningly likely the motive is racial But Inspector Cetin Ikmen, husband of Fatma, father of eight and the son of an Albanian mother whose reputed gift of second sight gave rise to rumours that she was a witch, is not one to acquiesce in the obvious.
The evidence points in the direction of Robert Cornelius, an English language teacher, and Reinhold Smits, a half-German businessman, known to have Nazi sympathies. But the dead man’s address book reveals another link between the two: a ninety-year-old Russian émigré who has for decades presided over her family from her ornate sickbed, and who believes she has a secret worth an old man’s life.
`Belshazzar's Daughter is an unusual and very well written first novel by Barbara Nadel. Set in Istanbul, it begins with the investigation of a horrific murder and ends with an incredible revelation. 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 portrait of an exotically different city’ Sunday Telegraph
`Intriguing, exotic ...local colour, judiciously applied and ethnic differences (White Russian refugees, uxorious Turks, fraught British expats) skilfully explored. So is the psychological makeup of a beautiful nymphomaniac, chilly towards besotted lovers, dangerously drawn to rough trade. A first novel, exciting, accomplished and original’ Literary Review
‘Barbara Nadel’s debut is a spicy thriller set in Istanbul’s back alleys... 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
`This is an extraordinarily interesting first novel’ Evening Standard
`Best crime fiction [of the year] by a new writer was Barbara Nadel’s Belshazzar’s Daughter. Set in Istanbul with ...a great blooming baroque plot (ditto talent)’ Independent
`Really refreshing to encounter something as idiosyncratic and evocative among debut novels as Barbara Nadel’s Istanbul-set thriller’ The Times

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