Tangled Web UK Review July 2008
Pretty Dead Things by
Barbara Nadel
hbk out January 08
Published by Headline
at £19.99
A new Turkish novel from Barbara Nadel is always something to look forward to. She has now established her detective, Chief Inspector Cetin Ikmen of the Istanbul Police, as a sleuth as well-known as Ghote, Frost or Carella. As well as being complex and tortuous whodunits, the books do for Istanbul what Donna Leone does for Venice - an incidental tourist guide.
In this new book, we have the usual cast of characters, which includes the glamorous sergeant Ayse Farsakoglu, the rather up-market Inspector Mehmet Suleyman and Dr Sarkissian, the pathologist.
A wealthy businessman reports his wife missing and Ikmen discovers that the couple have a strange life-style, an ‘open marriage’, a hangover from thirty-years ago when they were part of a group of Turkish youngsters who used to hang around the hordes of Western hippies who would trek through Istanbul en route for discovering their inner selves further east.
The wife, Emine Aksu, has a continuous succession of lovers, but this time her husband feels that she has taken up with someone from the old days of the ‘sixties. There is no evidence that she is dead, but both Ikmen and the husband feel that this is most likely. The plot then plunges into investigations amongst the survivors of those times, especially in a Jewish part of the city. Skeletons are turned out of closets and then this happens literally, as a skeleton, with the head super-glued back on, is found propped in a very public place.
As with some of the other Ikmen books, some of the more thrilling parts take place underneath the city, where a whole warren of Byzantine tunnels, cellars and crypts still exist. In spite of the difficulty of pronouncing (even silently) the difficult Turkish names, this is a compelling read, not only for the exotic atmosphere and the excellent characterisation, but for the evocation of the strange period of the ‘beatniks’ and the ‘flower-people’ which came a shock to the conservative society of Turkey when they were invaded by the backpackers on their way to seek their gurus.
One odd thing which I do not remember being so obvious in previous books, is the constant lighting of cigarettes by most of the characters - Turks must be obsessive chain-smokers, as there is one light-up or stub-out per page!
(
Bernard Knight
ex Home Office Pathologist and author of the highly acclaimed Crowner John series)
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