Kismet (Kayankaya) [Paperback]

Jakob Arjouni (Author)

Book Description

Series: Kayankaya | Publication Date: July 2008

It all began with a favor. Kayankaya and Slibulsky were only trying to protect their friend Romario from his protectors, men who were demanding hard cash for the service. It ended with two bodies on the floor of Romario's restaurant, their faces covered in ghostly white makeup. Kayankaya is determined to track down their identities, when he realizes that he himself is being pursued by a faceless and utterly ruthless criminal gang. A new element has broken into the established order of Frankfurt gangland: battle-hardened Croatian nationalists. And when Kayankaya rescues Bosnian teenager Leila from a refugee hostel, the stakes get even higher. This thrilling, utterly captivating novel is the perfect fix for fans of literary noir.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Hard-boiled detective fans should welcome German author Arjouni's U.S. debut, the fourth book in his popular series (Happy Birthday, Turk! etc.) featuring Kemal Kayankaya, a wisecracking Turkish immigrant PI. When a ruthless gang calling itself the Army of Reason demands 6,000 marks a month from a Frankfurt restaurateur acquaintance of Kemal's, Kemal and his sidekick, Slibulsky, wind up in a gun battle that leaves two thugs dead. In 2001, the year this novel was first published, Balkan refugees were streaming into Frankfurt. Kemal must deal with Croatians trying to move in on territory already divided among German, Albanian, and Turkish bosses as well as searching for a wealthy woman's lost dog and protecting an all too worldly 14-year-old Bosnian girl. While Kemal lacks charm, this entry will whet readers' appetite for the three earlier Kayankaya mysteries.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

From Booklist

Frankfurt, Germany’s criminal underworld is calm under a triumvirate of German, Turkish, and Albanian bosses. But in attempting to drive off a new gang selling “protection,” Kemal Kayankaya, the Turkish private eye (and German citizen), becomes the linchpin for a lethal battle between brutal, war-hardened Croatian thugs and the somewhat complacent, established criminal order. Kemal, a voluble, wisecracking, sometime rogue, employs the hard-boiled Mike Hammer technique of sleuthing: walk into the enemy camp, ask blunt questions, and get beaten senseless—before finally setting things right. It’s difficult to take him terribly seriously as a tough, Marlowe-esque PI, but for readers who enjoy armchair travel with their crime, Kismet offers an illuminating glimpse of the multicultural New Germany, the burgeoning racism Kemal confronts almost daily, and the plight of refugees from the vicious ethnic conflict in what was once Yugoslavia. --Thomas Gaughan --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: No Exit (July 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1842432354
• ISBN-13: 978-1842432358
• Product Dimensions: 7.2 x 4.7 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.9 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,006,374 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Hard Boiled Racism in Frankfurt, November 6, 2010

By 

Steven Forth (Vancouver BC or Cambridge MA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Kismet: A Kayankaya Thriller (4) (Melville International Crime) (Paperback)

Kismet is part of a series featuring a German detective of Turkish extraction Kemal Kayankaya. The books are set in Frankfurt, but not the glittery efficient Frankfurt most visitors know from trade shows and business meetings. This story turns around the station area, the red light district where gangs struggle for control of the drugs, prostitution, gaming and protection rackets. The book surfaces the engrained racism of Germany towards its Turkish population (all of the industrial economies have deep racist thinking em bedded in their psyche, including Canada where I live, so this is not a particular slap on Germany, it is a fact that festers if ignored). Kismet, in which a group of Croatian nationalists is trying to wrest the area from its current Albanian, Turkish and German bosses. Kayankaya gets caught up in this almost by accident, killing two of the Albanians while trying to help a Brazilian friend. Struggling with a guilty conscious, and wanting to keep the Brazilian alive, he sets out to find out what is really behind the killings and who the people he killed are. In the best of Noir style, he becomes obsessed with the case, and won't let go no matter how often he is threatened or beaten up. The book gives a real feeling for the gritty side of Frankfurt and the ethnic tensions that color people's relationships. Kayankaya is the right mix of tough, smart, determined and vulnerable. He can suck up punishment and will kill if he has to but is not a bloodless automaton. All in all a fascinating look into Germany and an intriguing character. I will follow this series and look for the next books as they come out.

3.0 out of 5 stars Enjoyable for fans of the genre looking for something a little different., March 29, 2011

By 

Sarvi Sheybany "Film Student" (Los Angeles, CA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Kismet: A Kayankaya Thriller (4) (Melville International Crime) (Paperback)

If you new to the genre and looking for something great to sell it to you as literature, this isn't the title that will do it (check out Jim Thompson, Bill James, or others). If you read a lot in this genre and are looking for something new to add some variety, the characters and settings of this book are a nice change of pace. Good, entertaining summer reading, and a nice view into something a little different from the usual LA/Gotham hardboiled setting, or historical settings, but not something that made me want to run out and buy everything this author's ever written.

4.0 out of 5 stars Hard-Boiled Europe, March 5, 2011

By 

K. Nishikawa (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Kismet: A Kayankaya Thriller (4) (Melville International Crime) (Paperback)

(What's this?)

Arjouni's final novel in the Kayankaya series is a treat for crime fiction lovers: a breezy, first-person narrative situated firmly in the hard-boiled tradition. Comparisons to Chandler and McBain are rife, but the novelist Arjouni reminds me of the most is that pillar of the African American crime tradition, Chester Himes. Like Himes, Arjouni is his country's keenest observer of the intersections of race, masculinity, and the urban underworld. And like much of Himes's fiction, Kismet includes memorable scenes of surreal, explosive violence.

Originally published in German ten years ago, in 2001, some of Kismet's narrative details (I won't mention which, for fear of spoiling the "mystery") are dated, a product of specifically turn-of-the-millennium transformations to European society. Still, the novel affords great insight into Kayankaya's experiences as a Turkish-German man who, by all accounts, is as solidly working-class "Frankfurt" (the city in which he resides) as can be. For fans of the hard-boiled tradition, you can't go wrong with this finale to Kayankaya's adventures. The American publication of Kismet by Melville House leaves much to look forward to for the rest of the series' availability Stateside.