Hotel Bosphorus

 

Hotel Bosphorus / Esmahan Aykol
trans. from the Turkish by Ruth Whitehouse
London: Bitter Lemon Press, 2011, c2001.
246 p.

I picked up this Turkish mystery during Women in Translation Month for a little lighter reading, and I was entertained! It's the first in a series featuring Kati Hirschel, a German immigrant to Turkey who owns and operates a mystery bookshop. 

Kati is the typical amateur sleuth: she has a job that allows her to move around pretty much at will (great for the plot), she likes to stick her nose in, and she's a bit disaffected, trying to develop relationships with unsuitable men, this time a policeman involved in the case she finds herself in the middle of. 

Petra is a friend of Kati's from Germany, now a film actress with middling success but fairly well known. Kati hasn't talked to her for a long time when Petra suddenly gets in touch to let her know that she'll be filming in Istanbul, and maybe they can get together. They do catch up, but that very night one of the producers involved in the film is found murdered in his hotel room. Since Petra is one of the primary suspects, Kati doesn't want to leave this to the local police, she wants to investigate as well (surely reading all those detective novels she sells has given her an edge?) 

There is a lot in this book - some subtle humour, mostly self-deprecating - some social commentary on many different levels of Turkish society and European stereotypes of Turkey as well - some fairly explicit encounters with said policeman which also points out differences of viewpoints and behaviours. The mystery makes sense and takes a rather dark turn; Kati is able to decipher some subtle clues because of her German background and connection to Petra, in ways that the locals can not. 

I found this very readable and want to follow up with the other 2 books in the series as well. Kati was slightly annoying like most amateurs in these kind of books have to be -- if they were polite and followed all the social rules there wouldn't be much of a story! I loved the setting, and would like to see what else the author has to say about this world.