This is the 6th book in the series featuring Inspector Çetin Ỉkmen of Istanbul, but the first I've read. Ỉkmen is in his mid-fifties and his mother, an Albanian, was known as the witch of Uskudar. Ỉkmen is said to have inherited her abilities. Here, Ỉkmen is investigating what appears to be a kidnapping. The two young children of controversial artist Melih Akdeniz have gone missing. The artist creates works on controversial themes, like a series of carpets woven with human hair and depicting sexual organs. He has spurned most other artists in the area as uninspired and lacking talent and thus has made himself many professional enemies.Ỉkmen feels something is not right about Akdeniz and his wife's story despite their obvious love for their children. Ỉkmen's deputy, Ayşe Farsakoğlu, has been in her position only six months, but had worked as a uniformed officer on some of his cases before that. She is a single woman in her early thirties with a modern outlook, and is a good foil for Ỉkmen.One of Ỉkmen's fellow Inspector's sergeants, Ỉsak Çöktin, is investigating another case. An elderly woman, Rosita Keyder, has been found dead in her home, seemingly of natural causes. However, another body is found in the home as well, a young man dressed in clothes from Argentina, and it soon becomes apparent that he has died some time previously and his body has been preserved. But who is her, why is he there, and when did he die.Çöktin works for Inspector Mehmet Suleyman, who is busy trying to find information on Rostov, a Russian gangster who seems to be growing his territory and influence in the city. Suleyman has been approached by a prostitute, Masha, who seems eager to provide information, and to know Suleyman's weaknesses.The three cases come together in interesting ways and I enjoyed the inventiveness of the plotline. I also found the home lives of the various characters interesting and enjoyed the way that each had its own effect on the plotThis novel's also brings in the complexities of religion. Rosita Keyder is Catholic. The pathologist Arto Sarkissian is Orthodox Christian. Çöktin is Yezidi, the native Kurdish religion. Ỉkmen's daughter Hulya , a Muslim is in love with a young Jewish man, Berekiah Cohen, son of a former colleague of Ỉkmen. As the novel is set post 9/11 but before the Iraq war on Saddam Hussein has begun, this aspect of religious war also comes into the plot.All-in-all a very enjoyable mystery, and a series I'd like to read more of.
After I finished reading Petrified I told my sister that I was thoroughly disgusted with it, and that is mostly true. I think. The story telling wasn't particularly bad, and there were parts of this story that really were thought provoking. The juxtaposition of East and West, Islam and Christianity, past and future, holding on and letting go were very present and potent in this Cetin Ikmen novel, and there was a lot in those themes that grabbed me and held me through the whole book. And Nadel can tell a story in a way that makes a book next to impossible to put down, and next to impossible to get out of your head once you do finally divorce the book from your hand!That said, in this novel Barbara Nadel took one of the best characters she has created in these stories (and I mean best both in terms of her craftsmanship of the character and in terms of his morals and ethics), and all but ruined him for me. I found this character's actions and behavior in this book to be completely inconsistent with the character Nadel established for him in past books. The author's decision to take this character down a path that seemed completely at odds with all of the past character development she's done with him seriously colored my impression and enjoyment of Petrified. I feel like there is so much darkness in these books, that it just doesn't do to have a major character from the light side slip into the dark side. Of course, I guess sometimes even very good people lose their bearings and fall, and sometimes they fall far, and with significant consequence. Maybe that was Nadel's whole point.In addition to the problems I had with character, I felt that the primary mystery in this book was transparent, and I had it figured out fairly quickly. I was also frustrated with the cliffhanger ending of this book, but that's just because I generally like instant gratification.So, there was a lot about the book I didn't like. But Nadel made me think. A lot. About a lot of themes and about what she could have been *really* saying with this work. Like the artist in this story, she took lots of ugliness and lots of things that made me very uncomfortable, and made statements with this work. I have to give her credit for that.
Do You like book Petrified (2015)?
Barbara Nadel has been going to Turkey many years. She has written a number of murder mysteries featuring Ikmen, inspector in the police force of Istanbul. I read this while on tour in Turkey after a short visit to Istanbul and loved hearing about some of the things we were visiting or had seen. Not too sure about the foresight of Ikmen and his 'witch' mother (now dead). But the characters live on in one's memory and they are an interesting bunch. For anyone addicted to murder mysteries and always looking for another good read, this award winning English author is recommended.
—Rosemary
It's fantastic to have more of Barbara Nadel's books available, even if it's hard to read them in sequence. When I read my first book by Nadel, I was struck by the exotic locale, but now she's built a whole world in my mind. It's summer in Istanbul, and two children are missing from their artist-parents home. Inspector Suleyman is trying to pin something on a Russian mobster. And in the small apartment of an elderly, recently deceased widow, the police make a surprising discovery. As the investigations proceed, there are more deaths, more encounters with some of Istanbul's peculiar citizens, and more opportunity for Inspector Ikmen, who inherited some unusual abilities from his Albanian mother, to put together the pieces and solve a horrible crime.
—Susan
