The Janissary Tree - Jason Goodwin

Imagine an academic brimming with knowledge who feels that he'll burst if he doesn't write a book and share the information he's accumulated over the years. He doesn't want to write for a handful of fellow researchers only, but how to reach the general public? Who wants to know about Byzantine History of all things? In the Acknowledgements we learn that a relative advised the author "to take a detective-story approach to the Ottoman Empire". And so Yashim Togalu was born, a unique eunuch in so far as he doesn't live in the Sultan's Harem and doesn't work as a lala, either, a guardian and watchman for a rich family - as so many other eunuchs do - ...  Read the complete review

Yashim, a eunuch formerly attached to the Sultan’s palace in Istanbul (as a eunuch not the only thing he was formerly attached to!), is summoned by the Sultan to look into the mysterious death of a guardsman whose remains are found in a huge cauldron. One death soon becomes two and before long Yashim finds himself at the heart of something very suspicious. With the help of Stainslav Palewsk the bumbling Polish ambassador and Preen – a high class hooker for want of a better description, Yashim tries to find the culprit before another murder is committed and in doing so unearths a twenty-year grievance…. Set in Ottoman Istanbul in the 1830s, I suppose one ...  Read the complete review