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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent,
By saliero (NSW Australia) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Belshazzar's Daughter: A Novel of Istanbul (Inspector Cetin Ikmen, 1) (Hardcover)
Nadel has written an excellent police procedural, and introduced an engaging cast of regular characters in this first Inspector Ikmen book. More than that, she writes evocatively of Istanbul - its physical nature and social life, and the diverse people who make it their home - from 500 years of Jewish descent seeking asylum to latter day English language teachers looking for refuge in their own way. I have lived in Istanbul myself amongst the foreign teacher expat community, and Nadel has captured this aspect perfectly. Some of the people fleeing their personal demons. She writes most sympathetically of those who have sought safe harbour from systemic persecution. Nadel has successfully managed to weave an engaging modern-day crime novel together with a strong sense of place and with a fascinating historical background. Along the way, we learn to care about the characters who populate the series, most especially Ikmen's family. I thoroughly recommend this book - all the elements have been 'got right' - plot, characterisation and location for a thoroughly diverting read.
22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Murder and madness in Istanbul.,
By
This review is from: Belshazzar's Daughter: A Novel of Istanbul (Inspector Cetin Ikmen, 1) (Hardcover)
Barbara Nadel's novel, "Belshazzar's Daughter," has an intriguing premise. Cetin Ikmen, a chain-smoking and hard-drinking detective on the Istanbul police force, is investigating the murder and mutilation of an elderly Jewish man named Leonid Meyer. Someone used acid to torture Meyer and then painted a swastika on a wall near the corpse. Is this heinous act the work of a right-wing anti-Semite or is there a less obvious motive?Nadel, who according to the book jacket has visited Turkey frequently, makes good use of her exotic locale to lend a touch of originality to what is essentially an ordinary whodunit. Ikmen and his partner Suleyman interview everyone who knew Meyer, and they look into the victim's past to see if it might shed light on who hated him enough to kill him so brutally. The colorful cast of characters includes the unlucky Robert Cornelius, a depressed British expatriate with a checkered past, a beautiful temptress named Natalia, and Natalia's grandmother, Maria Gulcu, a strange woman who knows a great deal more about Meyer's death than she's willing to reveal. There is also Reinhold Smits, a known Nazi sympathizer who once employed Meyer and then summarily dismissed him. Which of these suspects holds the key to the mystery? As the story unfolds, it becomes more and more convoluted and less credible, and the ending of "Belshazzar's Daughter" is way over the top. I liked the characters and the setting, but the plot was not well-developed and convincing enough to make this novel work for me.
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
The first of the Inspector Ikmen novels--promising great things to come,
By
This review is from: Belshazzar's Daughter: A Novel of Istanbul (Inspector Cetin Ikmen, 1) (Hardcover)
Barbara Nadel's Ispector Ikmen mysteries set in Istanbul have been compared favorably to Donna Leon's Venice-set mysteries, but the Nadel series may actually be even superior given her superb use of characterization. Her first work in the series, BELSHAZZAR'S DAUGHTER, shows already her gifts at creating a good mystery and fine characters, but she takes everything a bit too far over the top--not only does the solution to the central crime (the murder of a Russian Jewish expatriate by buldgeoning and pouring acid down his throat, with a swastika painted on the nearby wall in his blood) tie directly to one of the most notorious historical crimes in early twentieth-century Europe, but Nadel also has to throw in Ikmen's cross-dressing precognitive cousin who scries the novel's overdramatic conclusion in a bowl of oil--it's just too much. But the great characters of the series are all already here, including Ikmen's handsome and mother-dominated colleague Suleiman, his perpetually pregnant wife Fatma, his pushy father, and the chainsmoking, brandy-swilling Ikmen himself, a superbly drawn detective figure. There are better Ikmen novels to come, but this is a very solid start to the series.
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