Late one night, our glamour-puss nightclub manager receives a visit from Buse. For many years, Buse has kept letters and photos of a compromising nature, from a former relationship with a powerful lover. But her apartment has been ransacked and Buse worries about the consequences.
Being an obliging sort, our detective agrees to help out, but what initially appears to be a personal favour turns out to have repercussions that run much deeper. When the web of intrigue reveals that an arch-conservative politician and maybe even the Mafia are involved, it's time for our private eye to send out an urgent SOS via the underground Istanbul grapevine.
The last thing I would expect a book set in Istanbul to feature is a transvestite subculture, but that’s exactly what you have in this Hop-Çiki-Yaya series. The nameless main character is quite interesting… he knows exactly what he is, and isn’t apologetic about it. He plays up his masculine and feminine sides equally well. The story here isn’t about the murder as much as it’s about the blackmail, and the main character’s drive to find out what is going on, mostly for his own curiosity. I didn’t love the story, but I did enjoy it and would probably read more. I found the writing to be somewhat stilted and choppy, but I don’t know if that’s how the writing is or if it’s an aftereffect of translation.
