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Somer, Mehmet Murat - The Gigolo Murder (translated by Kenneth Dakan)
Paperback: 272 pages (Aug. 2009) Publisher: Serpent's Tail ISBN: 1846686946

Our unnamed hero/heroine from THE PROPHET MURDERS and THE KISS MURDER returns in a third outing. He has not been well; pining after a lost lover he is now a shadow of himself and his favourite Audrey Hepburn outfit doesn't even fit. However his close friend Ponpon insists on feeding and cheering him up and takes him to her show, whereupon he meets and falls for the devastatingly handsome (and married) Haluk (he of the fine bottom: “a magnificently muscular pair of buttocks, two thrusting halves of a crisp apple"). When Haluk's brother-in-law is arrested for murder, our hero decides to sleuth away to clear the brother-in-law's name and so be able to keep close to Haluk.

He is not without resources: as well as being a transvestite-club owner he is a successful computer hacker and his chief rival is not quite a friend but not an enemy either. There's a childhood friend who's now a top policeman and even his regular cab driver will help him out as he has an enormous unrequited crush on him. Fortunately our hero is as versed in martial arts as he is in fashion as he tangles with some nasty people along the way to the truth.

Where THE PROPHET MURDERS was, to me at least, more about setting up the characters and the milieu they live in, with an almost incidental crime plot, THE GIGOLO MURDER is much more satisfying as a crime novel. I enjoyed it very much and found myself gripped by the twists and turns of the complicated plot. There's plenty of action, it's pacey and it all takes place in a shade over 250 pages. Being one of the few Turkish crime writers to be translated into English, Mehmet Murat Somer provides a real insider's view of Istanbul.

Karen Meek, England
November 2009

Karen blogs at Euro Crime.

Details of the author's other books with links to reviews can be found on the Books page.
More European crime fiction reviews can be found on the Reviews page.



last updated 22/11/2009 15:07