The Baklava Club: A Novel (Investigator Yashim) - Hardcover

Goodwin, Jason

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0374294372 ISBN 13: 9780374294373

Publisher: Sarah Crichton Books, 2014

Synopsis

Join Investigator Yashim for a final exotic escapade in this rich Edgar Award–winning series

In four previous novels, Jason Goodwin's Inspector Yashim, the eunuch detective, has led us through stylish, suspenseful, and colorful mysteries in the Istanbul of the Ottoman Empire. Now, in The Baklava Club, Yashim returns for his final adventure―and his most thrilling yet.
Three naïve Italian liberals, exiled in Istanbul, have bungled their instructions to kill a Polish prince―instead, they've kidnapped him and absconded to an unused farmhouse. Little do they realize that their revolutionary cell has been penetrated by their enemies, who are passing along false orders under the code name La Piuma, the Feather.
It falls to Yashim to unravel all this―he's convinced that the prince is alive and that the Italians have hidden him somewhere. But there are just a few problems: He has no idea who La Piuma is, and he's in no mood to put up a fight―he's fallen in love! As he draws closer to the farmhouse and to the true identity of La Piuma, what Yashim discovers leaves him shocked and in the most dangerous situation of his career.
Goodwin has an eye for detail like no other, and in The Baklava Club he conjures Istanbul in all its glorious exoticism. This is a breathtaking, extraordinary conclusion to one of the most beloved series in mystery fiction, and its ending will leave you truly astonished.

About this title

About the Author:

Jason Goodwin is the Edgar Award–winning author of the Investigator Yashim series. The first four books―The Janissary Tree, The Snake Stone, The Bellini Card, and An Evil Eye―have been published to international acclaim. Goodwin studied Byzantine history at Cambridge and is the author of Lords of the Horizons: A History of the Ottoman Empire, among other award-winning nonfiction. He lives with his wife and children in England.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

1

 

THE man lives, or the man dies. It is a matter of the weather.

Tonight he will live: because the sea is smooth like watered silk beneath a crescent moon, the ship’s wake fanning out like a tear. The ship makes little sound: it is a still Mediterranean evening, and the timbers barely creak. A sailor in the fo’c’sle coughs; overhead a sail flaps and spanks the mast.

The man leans at the rail, looking out to sea; and the assassin stands back a little, also watching the wake of the ship as it slowly widens and ripples and disappears toward the empty horizon. He watches the incessant production of the wake, and scarcely glances at the man he has come to kill. La Piuma, “The Feather.”

It would be easy tonight, the assassin thinks. A murmured conversation at the stern rail, a quick blow to the head. Man overboard. Then the assassin might raise the alarm.

But that won’t do. The Committee wants La Piuma to simply disappear.

Better to wait for a wind. Cloud cover, more noise, the pitch and roll of the ship.

La Piuma can sleep in peace another night. He will eat another meal of fish, boiled chicken, and fruit with cheese, and drink his wine. Coffee will be served in the morning, if that’s what he wants.

Would he fight for this day’s grace? the assassin wonders, moving away along the deck. La Piuma was as good as dead as soon as the ship set sail from Bari to Istanbul. Would he be grateful to live even for one more dull, eventless day at sea?

He would, the assassin considers; yet he cannot answer why.

 

Copyright © 2014 by Jason Goodwin

About this edition

• Publisher: Sarah Crichton Books
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 0374294372
• ISBN 13: 9780374294373
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288