Turkish Delight: İstanbul and Barbara Nadel’s Inspector İkmen Series

British writer Barbara Nadel has built a fascinating and deeply felt series of contemporary procedurals set in the Turkish capital and featuring the chain-smoking, brandy-swilling Inspector Ikmen, husband to a strict Muslim woman (who disapproves of his drinking) and loving father of numerous bairns. The plentiful books in that series have earned her the title of the Donna Leon of Istanbul. Her series debut, Belshazzar’s Daughter, finds Ikmen investigating a brutal murder in Istanbul’s rundown Jewish quarter. London’s Literary Review found that first novel an “intriguing, exotic whodunit,” and the London Independent also commended that series opener, writing, “Set in Istanbul, with a battered, cynical and credible Turkish cop, and a great blooming baroque plot (ditto talent).”

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“İstanbul Is Always There”: Barbara Nadel’s Inspector İkmen Series

Dubbed the Donna Leon of Istanbul by critics, British writer Barbara Nadel has built a fascinating and deeply felt series of contemporary procedurals set in the Turkish capital and featuring the chain-smoking, brandy-swilling Inspector Ikmen, husband to a strict Muslim woman (who disapproves of his drinking) and loving father of numerous bairns. Her series debut, Belshazzar’s Daughter, finds Ikmen investigating a brutal murder in Istanbul’s rundown Jewish quarter. London’s Literary Review found that first novel an “intriguing, exotic whodunit,” and the London Independent also commended that series opener, writing, “Set in Istanbul, with a battered, cynical and credible Turkish cop, and a great blooming baroque plot (ditto talent).”

Since that first novel, Nadel, a former actress, has penned eleven more in the Inspector Ikmen series (as well as four wonderfully atmospheric World War II novels in a series featuring London undertaker Francis H). Her latest, Death by Design, is out this coming December in the U.S. Nadel, winner of the Crime Writers’ Association Silver Dagger for Deadly Web, is hard at work on number thirteen in her powerful series, and we wish her luck with that.

Barbara, I am so pleased to finally have you on Scene of the Crime. I have been a fan for years.

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