I’m in Turkey with four siblings who live in the same house but never meet

Barbara Nadel has written a number of books about her Turkish police officer character Inspector Ikmen and his team of detectives. I am pretty convinced that I have read one of these books in the past, although it may be before I started keeping records of my reading. My general impression is that I didn’t enjoy it a lot so I haven’t read any others. As I obviously have one on my to-be-read pile I can only assume that it was one of the books sent with my monthly subscription so I thought that I would give it a go. I enjoyed it a lot.

The story is set in Istanbul and the author uses the history and mixes of ethnicities in that great city as an important part of the plot – I had no idea of the variety of backgrounds of people who live there, the number of languages spoken and how different traditions live alongside each other. This is the nineteenth book in the series but I didn’t feel disadvantaged in knowing what was going on by not have read the previous novels.

The story revolves around the deaths of four older people living in one house. The house is old and large and each of the four people, who are siblings, are living separately and only communicating via letter. The investigation takes the Inspector and his team into the past to discover the conflicts between the family members and, at the same time, he is trying to deal with a couple of young people who seem to be murdering people at random in the city. The investigations lead to a religious shrine, superstitious beliefs, a possibly murdered baby, neglect and poor mental health experienced by abused people and to reading documents in ancient script. The plot is not particularly complex but it is engaging.

This was an enjoyable crime novel which made the best use of the history of the city in which it is set. I shall pass this book on for another person to read but I would pick up another in this series if I saw one.