When an elderly man is brutally murdered in Istanbul's decrepit Jewish quarter, it seems frighteningly likely that the motive was racial. Baffled by the nature of the crime, the Turkish police unleash their best weapon, the chain-smoking, brandy-swilling Inspector Cetin Ikmen, husband to a strict Muslim woman (who disapproves of his drinking) and loving father of eight (with another on the way). The evidence points in the direction of Robert Cornelius, an English-language teacher who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and Reinhold Smits, a half-German businessman known to have Nazi sumpathies. But the dead man's address reveals another link between the two: a ninety-year-old Russian emigre who has for decades presided over her family from her ornate sickbed, and who believes she has a secret that is worth an old man's life.
Hardcover copy, Author: Nadel, Barbara, Thomas Dunne Books
