FFB: Murder with Minarets - Charles Forsyte

THE STORY:  Someone is killing the diplomatic staff in the housing complex for the British Embassy in Ankara. Two people have been found dead in their bathrooms, one seemingly of a heart attack and the other electrocuted. In both cases the bathrooms were locked and no one entered the apartment. Were they accidents as the police insist they were? Knowing full well the Turkish police will never pursue these suspicious deaths of foreigners Jan Duquesne, wife of First Secretary & Head of Chancery Stephen Duquesne, and her sister Gina turn amateur sleuths to find proof that both people were murdered. They uncover an ugly blackmail scheme, chicanery involving classified documents and endanger themselves in the process.

THE CHARACTERS: I got the feeling that the female half of the writing duo known as "Charles Forsyte" was in charge of this book. The story has both claustrophobic and heavily domestic atmosphere. We get a lot of catty gossip amongst the wives of the various under-secretaries, commissioners and typists working for H.E. (His Excellency, aka the Ambassador). First we meet Barbara "Ba" Hadley, brassy and opinionated wife with two rascally sons who spends much of the first chapter delivering the novel's exposition in a mix of off color humor and playful devotion to her husband Tom, Her Majesty's Consul in Ankara. They are preparing to go to a dinner party (one of several in the book) and can't get off the topic of Magda, another diplomat's wife who recently had a run-in with Tom about the size of her apartment and made outrageous demands to get a bigger place -- or else.

Magda, a foul tempered vicious women, is another one of those characters who has murder victim written all over her. She is a symbol of superficial sophistication, whose love of expensive clothes and her own self-importance colors her every thought and deed. When slighted she strikes back maliciously spreading rumors about infidelity, suggesting to artist Doune that her husband makes too many frequent visits to the Hadleys' apartment when Tom is never home. Is it any wonder that Magda is the first person to be found dead in her bathtub?

Kocatepe Mosque, Ankara

The focus always seems to be on the women in this story though it is the men who are doing the work at the embassy. Dinner parties and social functions make up most of the action allowing for several scenes with large groups and unusual dynamics in the character relationships. So much of the book's first half is devoted to this interplay that I wondered where the mystery would enter the story. That happens after Magda's death and with the entrance of a visiting archaeologist, Christopher Milner-Browne, the brother of Peter yet another Under-secretary at the embassy.  Both brothers have a bitter sense of humor, almost reveling in their withering glances and caustic humor.  Jan, initially turned off by Christopher's patronizing manner, will learn it is the archeologist's aloof and ever cautious demeanor that leads him to seeing the truth within this claustrophobic microcosm of small-minded diplomats. It always seems to be the outsider who can see through the pretenses.

Other noteworthy people in the cast of Murder with Minarets (1968) include Paul Tranter, Magda's husband who has been acting too secretively of late; Francis Allardcye, Doune's vain and oversexed husband who claims to be a professional violinist but is only a big fish in a small pond relegated to teaching music classes at the Turkish Conservatoire; Laura O'Halloran who has "ear-witness" evidence on the night of second death that implicates a man and a woman; Gina who begrudgingly steps in as Jan's Archie Goodwin doing much of the dangerous legwork; and a couple of Turkish servants whose domestic activities the reader would do well to pay close attention.

INNOVATIONS:  I'm a on a roll with digging up unusual detective novels with complicated or bizarre murder methods. The ingenious method of dispatching the victims in their bathtubs is reminiscent of the kind of thing Christianna Brand would dream up. It lacks the technical expertise of John Rhode, the murder means maven of the Golden Age. Instead, Forsyte's method signals the work of an evil domestic handyman. Both Gina and Christopher manage to uncover clues that lead to the revelation of how the deaths were accomplished. Once again, this key moment happens during a cocktail party. Who knew that diplomats spent so much time throwing parties for each other?

Some of the best clue planting is done in casual conversation reminding me again of Brand and also Dorothy Bowers and Helen McCloy. It happens so often that every time I came across something seemingly throwaway and innocuous -- an ashtray being unnecessarily cleared away from a table to make way for the tea things -- I immediately wrote it down. Four of those statements proved to be genuine clues to discovering who the guilty party is. Gold stars for clue planting to Forsyte for this book! For a long time this didn't seem like a detective novel at all. In the end, however, Murder with Minarets proves to be a brilliantly constructed plot with quite a bit of misdirection.

THINGS I LEARNED:  Loads of colorful Turkish locations, some insight into Turkish culture, satiric commentary on the indifferent 1960s era Turkish police all added to the enjoyment of this novel's exotic setting. A picnic that takes place in a seaside park with a view of a "Crusader's castle" (as Jan calls it) was described so evocatively it made me long to see it in person.  So I looked up images online and lingered over the photos of Crusader castles on Turkey's coastline. There's one above for you to enjoy.

THE AUTHOR: "Charles Forsyte" is the pen name used by husband and wife writing team Gordon Philo and Vicki Galsworthy. Philo was not only a mystery writer but a former spy, diplomat in the Far East, and an amateur magician and sleight of hand practitioner. I am assuming that much of the flavor of the domestic life of a diplomat in Murder with Minarets is drawn on his own experiences as diplomat in Turkey between 1954 and 1958. I will not venture to guess if any of the characters was actually based on any of his colleagues or friends. His wife Vicki is a distant relation of writer John Galsworthy whose many novels that make up "The Forsyte Saga" gave the couple their pseudonym.

EASY TO FIND? There are a handful of copies of Murder with Minarets offered for sale by online booksellers. The book, the last of the four mysteries by Philo & Galsworthy, was published only in the UK and had no paperback reprint that I know of. Copies of the "Cassel Crime" 1968 first edition show up as well as a 1990 reprint in large print from Ulverscroft. More copies of the large print edition can most likely be found in local libraries in the UK and US.  

FFB: Nothing Is the Number When You Die - Joan Fleming

THE STORY:  What seems to be a simple job of finding a university student who took an extended leave turns into an adventure worthy of a private eye movie. Nuri Iskirlak finds himself interrogating college girls, landladies and aging aristocrats. With each visit he learns more of the student's intriguing life outside of Oxford. Nuri is pursued by the sinister Arnika, uncovers the tawdry life of a promiscuous co-ed and her trail of pregnancies and boyfriends, and stumbles upon the location of a missing cache of pure heroin.

THE CHARACTERS: Nuri bey was previously encountered in Fleming's CWA Award winning thriller When I Grow Rich (1962) and his adventures in Nothing Is the Number When You Die (1965) make up an almost direct sequel. Unfortunately, the finale of the previous book is spoiled more than once in the telling of this novel so it is best to read the books in order saving this one for last. Fleming models the book on an old-fashioned 40s noir film with Nuri acting as a private eye albeit without the handsome retainer to entice him to carry out the work. As a friend of the family he is asked to track down the son of Torgüt Yenish, whose wife Tamara Nuri knew as a teenager. Complicating matters is the fact that Nuri has been in love with Tamara his entire life, and regrets not having the courage to have confessed his love to her decades ago. The Yenish boy, Jason, is a student at Oxford where is has just up and vanished from his classes. Rumor has it that he has taken up with a bad girl who is leading him down a path of temptation and self-destruction. Nuri agrees to travel to England and find the boy, convince him to return to his studies and to contact his family. The job will prove not to be as simple as he thinks. For that night Yenish is shot in the head in his study. Now it seems as if his son's disappearance is connected to some criminal enterprise.

Among the many people Nuri questions his most intelligent and insightful helpers are women.  From the curious and overly friendly co-ed to the ancient woman who is secretly providing a haven for Jason Nuri finds that Western women are wiser, more compassionate and more resourceful than any of the men he meets in Oxford and its environs. There are comic characters among the women like Lady Mercia Mossop forever tending to her gardens and doing her best to keep her rambunctious dog Fido from intimidating Nuri with affectionate pouncing.  I also liked the scenes with Maisie, the garrulous good-natured aunt of Jason's girlfriend who acts as Nuri's chauffeur for a while. The standouts in the novel are Jason's girlfriend Hannah who reluctantly becomes Nuri's best confederate while the most unlikely and bravest of the lot turns out to be Yenish's widow Tamara who ultimately finds that she most resort to crime in order to save the reputation of her husband before the police discover his own secret criminal past. Tamara also has the most interesting hobby of astrology combined with astronomy. She has a private retreat with a high powered telescope that is her own observatory which will provide her with a brief moment of unusual clarity towards the climax of the novel.

Surprisingly, the crux of the plot will center around not Jason but his equally lost lover Ronda. She is lost in spirit, a directionless young lady who thinks her only worth is in offering herself to any man who will pay attention to her.  She has been pregnant too often,  had too many abortions and now has become Jason's project. He suffers from the Good Samaritan complex and is convinced he can save Ronda.  Nuri bey, on the other hand feels that Ronda is more than trouble -- she is a disaster waiting to happen.  His thoughts about Ronda, however, go unheeded and will serve as a dire prophecy for future horrific events.

INNOVATIONS: Fleming does a fine job conveying the culture shock that Nuri bey faces when he is meets England's Swinging '60s full on. This "fish out of water" kind of story can make for farcical humor, but Fleming chooses to introduce humorous elements in a sly manner. As the story is primarily told from Nuri's viewpoint we get his outsider's opinion of scandalous fashions, wild hair styles and outspoken young women that are all too much for a conservative middle-aged man of Islam. Her satirical descriptions of modern college girls are always done with her customary tongue-in-cheek humor, never appearing to be disguised social critiques.

QUOTES: "Have pity on yourself, man, do not behave like an adolescent schoolboy, nurturing a rattlesnake which will surely grow up and kill you."

"...he doesn't kill for the sake of killing, as you would say. He would kill in desperation and will kill but he's not..."
"Trigger-happy?
"No. I would say he is not a person but a figure of acquisition, he lives to acquire."

After witnessing Nuri Bey become uncharacteristically violent to Arnika, the antagonistic and sinister Turk hot on his trail, two railway officials are described: The two officials looked at each other; knowing, as they did, that the travelling public consisted largely of lunatics and raving maniacs, they exchanged sardonic smiles.

A few girls walked up or down but they were of such terrifying aspect that Nuri bey did not dare ask anything of them. Some wore black stockings and had skirts many inches above their knees so that Nuri bey felt they must have lost their skirts. Some wore their hair piled as high as XVIII Century wigs, others had their hair hanging on their shoulders and some wore it over their faces in a kind of yashmak but more concealing and these Nuri bey too to be more ladylike and shy ones. All looked at him but their eyes strayed away with no more interest than if they had alighted upon a hat rack.

The longer I live, Nuri bey mused, the more I find I have to learn and he looked back at the land where the sun goes down, as they used to do in his country in the old days, and marvelled.

THE AUTHOR:  I've written about Joan Fleming many a time on this blog.  Astonishingly, I just learned that this is really the only mystery blog where her work is paid any attention or discussed in detail. There is a single hidden Joan Fleming page containing several book reviews (very old and unsecure so it often so doesn't show up in internet searches) with many reviews of her books by someone who discovered her work, but apparently never really followed through with his plan of reviewing all her novels. The only other places I uncovered posts on Joan Fleming are two brief posts:  one at Mysteries in Paradise and the other -- not too surprisingly-- at Mystery*File.  She's one of my favorite writers. Not one book has ever left me wanting or disappointed. For several years now I have been contemplating setting up a tribute website for her work. As Anthony Boucher so astutely observed in one of his Fleming reviews: "...no two of her novels resemble each other in anything save artistry."  I agree wholeheartedly; reading Joan Fleming is like coming to meet a favorite writer for the first time over and over.

EASY TO FIND?  Why yes it is! What wonderful Christmas news, right? Tune in tomorrow to find out just how easy. And for those who like their vintage mysteries authentically vintage there are hundreds of copies of both US and UK hardcover and paperback editions. Five pages worth of copies turned up in my simple search. Happy Hunting and Happier Reading!

FFB: When I Grow Rich - Joan Fleming

The Turkey described in Joan Fleming's award winning When I Grow Rich (1962) is not meant to be a temptation to tourists. This is not picture postcard pretty Istanbul.  It's dirty, fetid, and decrepit city she describes. If we are to believe Fleming the population is made up of mostly self-interested market sellers, rude and foul speaking taxi drivers, outright thieves, and a crowd of bloodthirsty denizens who enjoy the occasional public hanging. Though we are in the 1960s it still feels like the Turkey of centuries gone by. Yet there are glimmers of beauty amid the ugliness. The bibliophile protagonist Nuri Izkirlak who goes by the formal moniker Nuri bey, and his mismatched partner in adventure the teenager Jenny Bolton are the part of that beauty and the true saving grace of the book.

Nuri bey is a philosopher in love with books.  He has few friends and spends nearly all of his time in his home which is more of a library dedicated to the great thinkers of the East and West.  He occasionally visits the home of Madame Miasma, a former member of the old Sultan's seraglio and not one of the pretty ones. At the start of the book we find Nuri bey being asked a favor.  Her female companion Valance has recently died in a freak accident when she fell from a balcony into the sea and Madame is now short handed in the servant department.  She wants Nuri bey to deliver an attache case to a young man waiting at the airport.  He agrees without hesitation and unknowingly enters the Turkish criminal underworld.

The favor seems like the simplest of tasks but of course complications arise. Tony, Madame's courier, is travelling with Jenny Bolton, a ditzy Britisher only 19 who alternates between acting much younger and then much older than her chronological age. When the police show up at the airport Tony flees just as he is about to meet Nuri bey and somehow Jenny ends up with the case. She convinces Nuri bey to help her elude the police and he takes her to his apartment where he tries to figure out what to do now that he has failed Madame Miasma. Soon the story becomes a cat and mouse game between Jenny and Nuri bey on one team, and Madame Miasma and her eunuch henchman Hadjii on the other, as they all try to recover the case and get it back to Tony who seems to have vanished completely.

Madame Miasma at first appears to be an eccentric old woman but she develops into one of the most sinister and villainous characters of the book. Selfish, vengeful, spiteful, and cruel Miasma thinks of herself first and foremost and will stop at nothing to get her case and its mysterious contents back.  Likewise, Jenny initially introduced to the reader as an airhead turns out to be one smart cookie who can hold her own against the malevolent ex-harem girl and her unctuous not to be trusted servant.  But Miasma is wily and manipulative and can turn on the charm when she needs to.  There will be several unfortunate traps that both Jenny and Nuri bey fall into before the Hitchcockian plot comes to its unexpected conclusion.

Though on the surface When I Grow Rich may seem to be yet another pursuit thriller set in an exotic locale Fleming is interested in a lot more than action and crime. The book discusses the still pertinent topic of recreational drug abuse and its insidious effects. Drug trafficking and smuggling play a big part in the plot and Fleming does not waste words criticizing a hedonistic lifestyle. She makes clear also her views on the potential for drug smuggling to create global havoc. But more subtly, and in the end rather powerfully, she is telling a story of obsession and misplaced devotion. Nuri bey comes to realize what a waste his life has been among his books. He loses a great deal over the course of the novel, both physically and emotionally, but that loss leads to a epiphany that changes him for the better. In contrast we get the constant longings of Miasma for riches and her long faded youth and Hadjii's perverted though hidden love for his employer. And there are Jenny's puzzled thoughts of how two people can thirst so wildly for money when they are both so close to the grave.

Fleming won the Gold Dagger from the Crime Writers' Association for When I Grow Rich and would win it again for the book she seems to be best known for Young Man, I Think You're Dying (1970).  Several of her books have been reprinted as eBooks by The Murder Room, Orion's imprint devoted to reviving out-of-print crime writers' work. Some of the titles are also available in paperback editions.  Joan Fleming is too much overlooked when crime writers of the past are discussed and much of her large body of work still remains out of print. But luckily nearly every title she wrote is available in the used book market in very affordable paperback editions, both from US and UK publishers.

Crime Fiction on a EuroPass: Mehmet Murat Somer

Final stop is Turkey on the whirlwind tour of crime fiction throughout Europe. I have selected Mehmet Murat Somer, a Turkish writer whose highly unusual detective novels feature a sassy and nameless transvestite who begins her career as amateur sleuth in a funny and surprisingly poignant crime thriller called The Prophet Murders. By day a whiz of a computer consultant, by night a night club owner who sports Audrey Hepburn look-alike outfits our hero (and heroine) stumbles upon a series of murders. The victims are all transvestites who all bear the given names of Islamic prophets. The book is not as successful as a whodunit and the mystery is less than gripping. However, the story of these marginalized men who love to dress as women yet still know how to be men in a culture where being out and proud can lead to imprisonment and even execution is the most fascinating part of the book. And the plot takes advantage of some very topical elements (fundamentalist Islamic beliefs, bigotry, gay life as a cultural phenomenon) to show off a world few readers would ever encounter had the book been published as a mainstream novel. By adding a crime plot Murat Somer cleverly manages make material that might be unpalatable to some reading audiences more easy to swallow...so to speak. Added to all that are the lively and hip translations from Kenneth Dakan that make the books all the more accessible and entertaining.

The protagonist is not anything like a stereotype of the tranny with the heart of gold, or worse, the blowzy lampoon of a drag queen who tends to show up in comedy films and gay fiction way too often. She is just as tough in her guise as Audrey as he is in his day life as the brilliant computer geek. He's as handsome in the daytime as glamorous in his Audrey alter ego at night. And she's a literal kickass having mastered some killer moves in Thai kickboxing.  You'll not come across anyone like her in the your usual pile of crime books.

The series has been given two nicknames since the lead character is as yet unnamed. The US  publisher attempted to dub it the Turkish Delight series, but I prefer the more relevant Hop-Çiki-Yaya series. According to the author Hop-Çiki-Yaya is a Turkish derogatory term for queer people derived from a cheerleading chant popular on Turkish colleges in the 1970s. I like it because Murat Somer uses it he way the word "queer" has been taken back by gay activists - an insult turned around by the oppressed to be an empowering term just like the way our hero and heroine finds crime solving to be empowering.

The Hop-Çiki-Yaya series
The Prophet Murders (2008)
The Kiss Murder (2009)
The Gigolo Murders (2009)
The Wig Murders  (coming in 2012)