A real find, Harem has introduced me to a complex and powerfully imagined series featuring Istanbul policemen, Cetin Ikmen. Nadel manages that most difficult of police procedural feats: how to provide the brilliant maverick of crime fiction in a context in which he could plausibly make his living amongst colleagues and institutions. Although, Ikmen suffers the traditional fate of being told to 'take some holiday' by his superior, he is deftly woven into a department of politicised superiors, rival detectives, dodgy juniors and friends. He is also given a richly complicated family that offers a way into his considerable empathetic powers. It is almost unsurprising to learn that his mother was a reputed witch and Ikmen has learned to trust his uncanny hunches. So when a dead raped teenager proves to be his daughter's friend, the reader is confident that Ikmen will never give up. Not even when she proves to have stumbled into a highly specialised prostitution racket in which elite males are encouraged to indulge fantasies of the Sultan and his harem. How far is the dead girl connected to the kidnap of Turkish film star's American wife, and what terrible secrets lie buried in that outwardly successful family?
The story is multi layered as we follow the characters surrounding Ikmen. Istanbul
proves to be a city of concealed cisterns, tunnels, and mysteries to match the
sects, secret societies, criminal gangs and families who dream of a princely
past to the extent of committing cruelty in order to re capture it. Not all
such people are to be found outside the law. From political conspiracy to street
beggar, Nadel gives us present day Turkey as a land where not everyone cares
to live in the present. A stunning, satisfying read. I cannot wait to get the
others.
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Susan Rowland Earlier books in the series are Belshazzar's Daughter (1st),
A Chemical Prison, Arabesk, Deep Waters