Kismet

by Jakob Arjouni

Published 22 March 2007

It all began with a favour. 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 make up. Kayankaya is determined to track down their identity, when he realises that he himself is being pursued by a faceless but utterly ruthless criminal gang. A new element has broken into the established order of Frankfurt gangland: Croatian nationalists, battle hardened from the wars in their homeland. And when Kayankaya rescues the teenage Bosnian, Leila, from what purports to be a refugee hostel, the stakes get even higher.

Kismet is a brilliant novel about organised crime, the fallout from the Balkan wars, and the madness of nationalism from one of Europe's finest crime writers.


Happy Birthday, Turk!

by Jakob Arjouni

Published 31 December 1993

Brother Kemal

by Jakob Arjouni

Published 22 August 2013
Valerie de Chavannes, a financier's daughter, summons Kayankaya to her villa in Frankfurt's diplomat's quarter and commissions him to find her missing sixteen-year-old daughter. She is alleged to be with an older man who is posing as an artist. To Kayankaya, it seems like a simple case: an upper class girl with a taste for adventure. Then another seemingly posh job turns up: a major publisher needs to protect a writer who has offended Islamist groups during the Frankfurt Book Fair. The two cases seem to be straightforward, but it goes all-wrong for Kayankaya, as it almost always does. Luckily, that's when he's at his best.