Deep Waters: Inspiration for the Turkish Detective, BBC Two's Sensational New Crime Drama

If you love Istanbul, then you will enjoy Nadel's crime series, featuring experienced, perhaps somewhat jaded, police officer Cetin Ikmen. This story is well-paced and plotted, and muses on some interesting aspects of Turkish culture and history and contemporary mores. You don't have to be a Turkophile to love the setting, but those who are will be especially delighted. Sometimes Nadel is compared to Donna Leon. The settings for their crime stories are as much stars as the people. In that sense, both are equally successful. Both detectives also have family relationships with their wives and children which are brought to life and have a bearing on the stories. Both detectives also have internal conversations which are thoughtful and humane. I believe if you enjoy Leon, you will also enjoy Nadel, though both are distinctive writers able to bring their characters and places to life.

DEEP WATERS is a complicated, fascinating story of murder, revenge, and madness set in contemporary Istanbul, where people are still affected, not to mention haunted, by the 1999 earthquake. Inspector Ikmen and his team of police officers are investigating the murder of a young Albanian man and stumble into an ongoing blood feud. The solution seems obvious, but there are too many unanswered questions, including why the dead man has apparently donated a kidney to someone recently. While Ikmen-- married and with nine children-- struggles with his own past and present, including whether his mother was herself a victim of a blood feud, he follows the ever more complex trail of the murder case, which ends in a completely unexpected way. The story is rich with interesting and human characters and subplots, including Ikmen's transsexual cousin Samsun, who used to be Mustafa, and the city and Turkish life come alive on each page. The names are a challenge, but not too much more than the Swedish names in a Martin Beck mystery novel. In fact, although the author is touted as the Donna Leon of Turkey, I think her hero is more reminiscent of Sjoewall and Wahloo's Martin Beck than of Leon's Guido Brunetti. Either way, the novel is a good read, and I'm looking forward to reading others by the same author.