Belshazzar's Daughter

When an elderly man is murdered in Istanbul's decrepit Jewish quarter, it seems frighteningly likely the motive is racial. But Inspector Cetin Ikmen, husband of Fatma, father of eight and the son of an Albanian mother whose reputed gift of second sight gave rise to rumors that she was a witch, is not one to acquiesce in the obvious. The evidence points in the direction of Robert Cornelius, an English-language teacher, and Reinhold Smits, a half-German businessman, known to have Nazi sympathies. But the dead man's address book reveals another link between the two: a ninety-year-old Russian émigré who has for decades presided over her family from her ornate sickbed, and who believes she has a secret worth an old man's life.