One Death to Die: A Kayankaya Mystery [Hardcover]

Jakob Arjouni (Author), Anselm Hollo (Author, Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1997

While investigating the disappearance of Sri Dao, a Thai girl smuggled into Frankfurt for the flourishing sex trade, Kemal Kayankaya, the gritty P.I. with an attitude, uncovers an underworld of illegal aliens, corrupt cops, hustlers, and pimps. IP.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Proving that the classic Hammet/Chandler private eye plot can be enriched in even the most exotic setting, Arjouni continues his pungent series about the Turkish-German detective Kemal Kayankaya. Like his creator, Kayankaya is the son of Turkish guest workers, and he gets very little respect from his adopted country. A client, an "average schmuck from Frankfurt's West End" named Weidenbusch, wants Kayankaya to find his missing Thai ladyfriend, who seems to have been kidnapped by gangsters preying on illegal aliens. But Jakob Arjouni, who has learned from the masters how to turn a story inside out until we almost forgot where we started, has plenty of twisty surprises in store. Arjouni's last Kayankaya mystery, And Still Drink More!, is also a good read.

From Booklist

The opening of Europe's borders has stirred blatant racism throughout the continent, but it has also presented mystery novelists with a rich source of story ideas. In his third Kemal Kayankaya novel, Arjouni explores the immigration issue as it affects the travails of his Turkish private-eye hero. Despite being a German citizen, Kayankaya feels the sting of otherness wherever he goes in his hometown of Frankfurt, which gives him a moral imperative to solve the case of a missing Thai woman, the victim of a scam in which illegal aliens are lured into buying false papers and then promptly deported. Arjouni develops his human-rights theme with considerable poignance while offering an eye-opening view of the underside of contemporary German society. All this series needs to elevate it to the status of, say, Henning Mankell's Faceless Killers , set in Sweden but mining the same thematic vein, is less reliance on the conventions of the American hard-boiled novel, especially as it affects the character development of his hero. Bill Ott

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 183 pages
• Publisher: Fromm Intl; 1st English-language ed edition (April 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0880641703
• ISBN-13: 978-0880641708
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,757,095 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Hard-Boiled in Germany, April 14, 2000

By 

A. Ross (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: One Death to Die: A Kayankaya Mystery (Hardcover)

Arjouni's hard-boiled Turkish PI Kemal Kayankaya returns for his third story, this one centered in the world of Germany's "guest workers" and illegal immigrants. Germany's racism is played up in this one, as Kayankaya attempts to find a missing Thai woman. As usual, his wise-assedness gets him into deeper trouble than he really needs. There is a subplot with his best friend, Slibusky, which is a little hard to follow, but for the most part it's the smart, quick, read I've come to expect from Arjouni.