Arabesk - Barbara Nadel

When the peasant wife of one of Turkey’s most popular musicians is murdered, the highly cultured Inspector Suleyman knows he is hopelessly out of his depth. The raucous, plebeian world of Arabesk music, in which Brol Urfa is a star, is a foreign country to him. Why, he wonders, did Erol have a secret wife, when his relationship with the chanteuse Tansu was so well known? And what has happened to their child?

Suleyman’s mentor, Inspector ikmen, currently on sick leave, knows more than Suleyman about Arabesk’s overblown traditions, for his wife is a fan of its melodramatic laments. But even ikmen is taken aback by Tansu, Erol’s ageing girlfriend, a manipulative monster of vulgar rapacity that not even the slums of Karaköy, where the ancient bathhouse-keeper Madame Kleopatra now lies dying, could rival..