The Kiss Murder

The Kiss Murder is about club owning drag queen resembling Audrey Hepburn, who uses her inner detective skills to find out who has murdered her transvestite friend, Buse. The night before Buse's murder she told the drag queen that she was scared and someone was after her. Audrey's look a like sets out to find the murderer but soon finds that this is no easy task. What she uncovers is a shocker. WIll she be able to connect the dots and find out who the killer is or will she end up dead as well? This was a very fun, quick paced read. I will definitely be picking up the next book "The Gigilo Murders" which comes out in September.

Somer, Mehmet Murat. "The Kiss Murder", Penguin, 2008. Outrageous Fun Amos Lassen Mehmet Murat Somer is a Turkish former engineer, banker and management consultant who is now writing the Hop-Ciki-Yaya detective series. "The Kiss Murder" from that series has been received well and I am looking forward to the forthcoming five volumes. A nameless transvestite night club owner becomes a detective after one of the drag queens at her club is murdered. It seems that there is a tie between the crime and some kind of blackmail which involves photos and letters that were sent by a very powerful and conservative businessman. Some of the entertainers at the club were afraid that their secret lives at the club were going to be made public and they would be thrown out by their families. Our hero uses her drag to look like the young Audrey Hepburn but is not afraid. He/she turns to the gay community as well as to the club's bouncer and a friendly cab driver who thinks that his good looks make him irresistible. We get a wonderful look at gay Turkey, a country that we do not know much about in terms of the gay scene there. Surprisingly enough the book is a bestseller in Turkey and now we get a chance to enjoy it as well. Our hero whose name we do not know is an "all male" computer technician by day and a beautiful and charming woman by night. She is perhaps the funniest detective we have had since the Pink Panther. One of the stars of the club, Buse, is afraid that someone wants her private letters that she has received from her ex-lover and she goes to her boss for help and turns up dead the next day. Our lovely bar owner is out to find the murderers. The plot is just fun and a quick read. We are drawn into the investigation and our kick-boxing hero takes us on a tour of gay Turkey with a lovely witty story.

The Kiss Murder (2008) is narrated by a nameless male computer technician by day and a transvestite nightclub hostess by night, in Istanbul, Turkey. Though mainly concerned with maintaining her flawless Audrey Hepburn-like appearance, our narrator is drawn into an investigation of the murder of a fellow drag queen, who kept secret pictures and letters documenting her affair with a powerful man. Luckily our self-absorbed narrator is also a master of Thai-kickboxing, since the search for the secret cache stirs up all kinds of trouble. The unique viewpoint provides a fascinating look at modern Turkish life (should the drag queens pray with the men or the women at the funeral?) spiced with our narrator's self-confident wit. http://www.stopyourekillingme.com/S_Authors/Somer_Mehmet-Murat.html