Confined to his home on sick-leave (and prevented from sneaking his beloved brandy and cigars), Inspector Ikmen of the Istanbul police is forced to hand his latest case over to his prot,g,, the newly promoted Suleyman. That?s too bad, because the aristocratic Suleyman knows nothing about Arabesk, the throbbing, deeply sentimental music that is adored by Turkey?s working classes, and the case is drenched in those mournful melodies. A secret marriage, a murdered bride, an aging beauty, a father driven mad with grief and guilt?it?s all so melodramatic that Suleyman can barely keep his lip from curling. Ikmen, unashamed of his own plebeian tastes, is happy to weigh in from the sidelines, but both cops eventually come to one conclusion: At the real heart of this operatic catastrophe is the city itself....

Tourist brochures present Instanbul as a glamorous, modern city, but the brochures don't make much mention of Balat, a decrepit neighborhood of narrow, twisting alleys and crumbling tenements. Until recently it was home to Leonid Meyer, a reclusive elderly Jew who, like many of his neighbors, came here long ago to escape one of Europe's various bloodbaths. But Meyer's refuge ultimately became his coffin, the carnage crowned with a gigantic swastika. A racit murder? Inspector Ikmen has his doubts, and begins tracking down the few people who might have known the old man, including a faded prostitute, a shadowy family of Russian emigres, a dispairing rabbi, and a high-strung young Englishman in the throes of erotic obsession. The first in a stunningly atmospheric new series from a writer who has deservedly been compared with Michael Dibdin and Donna Leon....

A beautiful young man has been found dead in one of the city's neighborhoods. It's sad, perhaps tragic, but it should also be a simple case: There are signs of drug abuse, rumors of prostitution, and a local family has reported a missing son. Unfortunately, this is Istanbul, where few things are as simple as they appear, and the past has a way of intruding on the present. To unravel the riddle, the brandy-loving Inspector Ikmen will have to grapple not only with the residue of a century-old genocide, but also with an even older legacy that stretches back to the heyday of the Ottoman Empire....