Arabesk - Barbara Nadel

OK, I'm going to have to confess. I did not pick this book out because I knew all about the author or had read previous books, saw a review and was intrigued or any other interesting reason. I read it because it was yet another from a random box set I had bought. The only thing I may say is that I picked it before others in the set because it had prettier cover. Bad start? I guess. Story I had a peek at someone else's review of this book before I started writing my own and only then did I realise it is part of a detective series (shows how much I know!). Otherwise I would have been none the wiser, so I guess this is evidence ...  Read the complete review

Erol Urfa is a famous singer of Arabesk music (a form of Turkish music with working class links) and is the lover of another famous singer several years older than him. When it transpires that his wife, a peasant girl from Urfa's native village, and the mother of his child has been murdered, the whole of Turkey is shocked. What is more, the child is also missing. When a middle-aged man with Down's Syndrome, Cengiz Temiz is discovered to have taken the child from the flat, it seems that the case is solved - surely it must have been him? Newly appointed as Inspector, Mehmet Suleyman is forced to enter a world that is completely alien to him. His colleague, ...  Read the complete review