So far Nadel has written twenty-one books featuring Çetin İkmen, a chain-smoking and hard-drinking Istanbullu detective. In her attempt not to get killed and to uncover the truth of the attack, Penny reluctantly partners with a rookie CIA officer on his first overseas assignment.Īrguably the queen of contemporary Turkish crime writing is actually an Englishwoman called Barbara Nadel. Penny Kessler, a young intern at the US Embassy is caught up in a terrorist attack to which she is assumed to be a witness and so at risk from multiple angles. Then the war over, the city is a thick of stew of Cold War spies, war criminals on the run and dodgy dealings.Īnd most recently, although it is mostly set in the Turkish capital of Ankara, August Thomas’s debut novel Liar’s Candle (2018), is a great read. Joseph Kanon’s Istanbul Passage (2012) sees an expatriate American businessman, Leon Bauer, drawn into the city’s post-war shadowy underworld during World War Two. When it is hijacked by Armenian terrorists, the Turkish authorities try to establish contact-but the plane explodes in mid-air. Seven years later, a People’s Militia homicide investigator with defection on his mind boards a plane for Istanbul. The novel features two investigators assigned to the case: homicide detective Gavra Noukas and Brano Sev, an experienced Czech secret policeman who repeatedly appears in several later Steinhauer novels. Peter Husak, a young Czech student, is captured as he tries to flee the country. Olen Steinhauer’s The Istanbul Variations (2006) is set in the 1960s Cold War. The fascination with Istanbul as a city of intrigue and suspicion has continued for more contemporary writers (though often harking back to the city’s espionage ‘golden age’). Pollifax (1970) features a middle-aged New Jersey suburban housewife recruited by the CIA and stationed in Istanbul. Not much remembered now is American writer Dorothy Gilman’s comedic thriller The Amazing Mrs. It was inspired by Fleming’s stay in the city writing about an INTERPOL conference for the Sunday Times. 007’s major Turkish outing is in From Russia, With Love (1957), the fifth of his twelve Bond novels. Of course it’s inevitable that Bond would visit Istanbul-actually several more times in the movies than in Ian Fleming’s novels. But, as he asks questions about Dimitrios, Latimer’s own life is placed in danger. Fascinated by the story, Latimer decides to retrace Dimitrios’ steps across Europe to gather material for a new book. English crime novelist Charles Latimer is traveling in Istanbul and meets Colonel Haki who tells him of the mysterious Dimitrios-an infamous master criminal whose body has just been fished out of the Bosporus. However, Ambler’s slightly earlier novel The Mask of Dimitrios (known in the USA as A Coffin for Dimitrios, 1939), is his best novel for pure Istanbul flavor. Nazi spies and a Romanian hitman are out to kill him. A British Engineer is in Istanbul having completed a deal that could cement an Anglo-Turkish alliance and see Turkey join the Allied cause in World War Two. Perhaps the best is Journey into Fear (1940) which features his recurring character Colonel Haki, the taciturn but basically likable head of Turkish Security. The great English espionage stylist of the pre-war years Eric Ambler set several novels in Turkey. Agatha Christie (who knew Turkey well thanks to visits with her archaeologist husband Max Mallowan) chose Istanbul as the city in which Hercule Poirot would receive a telegram prompting him to return to London and so booking himself a train ticket and ultimately having to solve the Murder on the Orient Express (1934)). It is a novel that cements what would become Greene’s trademark style of a pervading sense of unease. Graham Greene’s second novel, Stamboul Train (1932) takes places among a disparate group of travelers, all with secrets, on a luxury train to Istanbul. Historically a melting pot (not always peacefully) of cultures, religions and races-a city of antiquity and modernity simultaneously.Īrrival in the city has inspired many books. Straddling the Bosphorus, bridging Europe and Asia, it was a vital trade route from the Black Sea to the Aegean. The Turkish city of Istanbul-once known as Byzantium, Constantinople or Stamboul-has long been a honeypot to thriller, especially espionage, writers.
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