Harem (Inspector Ikmen #5) – Barbara Nadel
The body of a teenage girl is discovered in a cistern deep below the city of Istanbul. For the Turkish police force’s most talented officer, Inspector Çetin Ikmen, this is a difficult case. The girl was his daughter’s friend and her attire, that of a nineteenth-century Ottoman, offers no easy explanation.With his promise of justice to the dead girl’s mother still fresh on his lips, Ikmen is suddenly taken off the case and reassigned to the kidnapping of an ageing movie star’s wife. The star is hiding something and so, Ikmen fears, are his superiors. A powerful secret exists in the labyrinthine city; one which those on either side of the law will do anything to prevent surfacing…
A serial killer is stalking the streets of Istanbul, seemingly targeting gay men. A man is found dead in a hotel room, a single stab wound in his heart. Could he be a victim of the “Peeper?” Inspector Mehmet Suleyman is assigned to the case, and is shocked to discover that the victim’s body has been delivered to forensics entirely “clean.” Has someone tampered with vital evidence? Meanwhile, a young carpet dealer, on the brink of a huge sale, is discovered in the mangled remains of his jeep, a bullet between his shoulder blades. The deal would have made him—the carpet he wanted to sell used to belong to Lawrence of Arabia. Did the young salesman know too much? Inspectors Cetin Ikemen and Suleyman uncover an incredible story and quickly realize that behind even the most respectable facade lurks passion, savagery, and madness…
An elderly woman is found dead in a flat with the perfectly preserved body of a young man. In an ancient part of the Jewish quarter, two children are missing. Their father, an artist whose genius borders on insanity, only seems more driven in his work. And a raid on a Russian gangster yields nothing except the dead body of a girl he claims is his daughter. Could the connection to all cases lie in a macabre forgotten art?
A body is discovered in a cave in the remote region of Cappadocia, Turkey. The woman died of gunshot wounds, and her corpse has lain undisturbed for twenty years. Inspector Cetin Ikmen is summoned from Istanbul to investigate and discovers a complex web of intrigue. Was she killed by her boyfriend, driven mad by love, or her husband, believing she would never bear the son he wanted so badly? When it is revealed the girl was pregnant when she died, the whispers and accusations increase. Ikmen, stifled among a rural community thriving on folklore and intrigue, begins to think he will never see clearly through the lies surrounding this case. One thing, however, is clear: the past is as potent as the present.
When Emine Aksu, the flamboyant wife of an Istanbul style guru, suddenly goes missing, Inspector Cetin Ikmen’s investigation leads him deep into her strange and colorful past
Memories and Such 