Windows To The World

Harem  

  by Barbara Nadel. 

Istanbul, crowded, ancient, exotic and a crossroads of many cultures and religions is where Police Inspector Cetin Ikman lives and works. Somehow he and his wife Fatma have been keeping their heads above water as they raise nine children. At this time  Fatma has gone on a trip to help out her brother who has been diagnosed with colon cancer and is dying from it. Ikmen who can keep peace in the city but two of his children who are still at home squabble constantly and it is driving him crazy. Suddenly one night his neighbor's daughter who works at bakery with his own daughter does not come home. It is not long before her body is found in a cistern dressed in an ornate gown and brutally treated.

An informant tells Ikman that the girl was acting as an 'odalisque' in a project called the Harem. An odalisque was a female slave in an Ottoman seraglio. She was an assistant or apprentice to the concubines and wives, and she might rise in status to become one of them. Most odalisques were part of the household of the Sultan. The behavior of the odalisque was one of passive acceptance and she would do anything sexual asked of her. The Harem of the current day was a hidden venue where people of high rank could fulfill their secret desires. However no one had died before and this signified a change in management.

When Inspector Ikmen begins to delve into the death he is pulled off before he can make much headway in order to help in the case of the kidnapping of the American wife of an aging movie star who was a favorite son of Istanbul because he had been the only Turk to ever make it big in Hollywood. This case takes a horrible turn when the American's severed head was delivered to the actor with a message. 

Cistern

There is much going on below the surface, both literally as well as figuratively. The sultans of yore had dug a system of canals and tunnels below the street surfaces in order to be able to travel from one part of the city to another in safety and secrecy. Many of these cisterns were in disrepair and closed by crumbled walls that had been helped along  in the terrible earthquake of 1999.

Ceiling in cistern

There seems to be more than one powerful secret in this multi layered city. One that both sides of the law want to keep under wraps. The Police Commissioner has taken charge of the investigation and he puts up barriers across any path that Ikmen and his team want to follow.  Ikmen who only wants the truth is finding that it is accompanied by threats to his life and those of his family as well as his colleagues. 

Barbara Nadel makes all the history as well as the current problem come to life. She does this with her deep characterization of personalities that recur from book to book. The disillusionment that Cetin Ikmen feels as he is prevented from solving the murder of the two young women is very real. Nadel is a master at drawing the reader to a different place and time.