The Baklava Club - Softcover

Jason Goodwin is the author of two non-fiction books, The Gunpowder Gardens: Travels in China and India in Search of Tea and On Foot to the Golden Horn, which won the John Llewellyn Rhys/Mail on Sunday Prize in 1993. His first Yashim mystery, The Janissary Tree, won the 2007 Edgar Allan Poe Award and became an international bestseller; the fourth book in the series, An Evil Eye, was published in 2011 to great critical acclaim. Across the series, his books have been translated into over forty languages. He lives in Dorset with his wife Kate and their four children.

Goodwin, an Ottoman Empire expert, introduced his historical series set in early nineteenth-century Istanbul in 2006 with The Janissary Tree, which won an Edgar for Best First Novel. The five novels in this series (this is purported to be the last) take a thin slice of Ottoman history, from 1836 to 1842. Yet, readers of the series learn, this slice is jam-packed with, well, byzantine levels of intrigue. The man who can unravel many of these plots and counterplots is Yashim, a eunuch detective. Here the action in Istanbul centers on the putative murder of a Polish prince. Yashim suspects the prince is still alive but hidden and in great danger. Two visitors, both women, afford Yashim the opportunity to play tour guide in Istanbul (one of the best parts of the novel) and to dispense historical side notes—for example, the fact that Viking warriors formed the imperial bodyguard in Byzantine times. Much of the plot and many references, though, are murky. Don’t sail to this Byzantium before reading the other novels in the series. --Connie Fletcher