Different beats
Chris Wiegand talks to the creators of two very dissimilar detectives, both at work in Istanbul’s meanest streets
Listen to Mehmet Murat Somer read from The Prophet Murders
Alternative Istanbuls … Barbara Nadel (left) and Mehmet Murat Somer
Crime fiction aficionados know Istanbul as the beat of Cetin Ikmen, the shabby, middle-aged Turkish cop created by English novelist Barbara Nadel. A former actress who lives in the Pennines and was raised in London’s East End, her heart clearly belongs to the city split by the Bosphorus. She has now plotted 10 cases for the intrepid Ikmen, said to be “the city’s, if not the nation’s, most famous police officer”.
But there’s a new investigator in town. Serpent’s Tail has just published an English-language translation of The Prophet Murders, the first installment of a whip-smart Istanbul crime series by Turkish author Mehmet Murat Somer. Somer’s hero isn’t a police officer but an amateur sleuth – and a catsuit-clad, Thai-boxing transvestite. If Ikmen shuffles and wheezes his way down Istanbul’s mean streets, then Somer’s effervescent hero sashays and shimmies around town. The characters couldn’t be more different, but they’re intriguingly drawn to investigate similar cases. The Prophet Murders recalls Nadel’s ninth Ikmen novel, A Passion for Killing, as both explore the deaths of homosexuals who appear to be the victims of a fanatical peeper on a moral crusade.
I arranged to meet Somer in Istanbul, and before travelling I called Nadel to ask her what the city offers crime writers. “Loads of history and an extremely diverse and huge population,” is her immediate answer, before she lets out a dark laugh: “And there are lots of places to hide the bodies.”