BARBARA NADEL

Ex-soldier Lee Arnold and his Muslim assistant Mumtaz Hakim run a detective agency in London's ethnically diverse, crime-ridden East End. Mumtaz is approached by an Egyptian woman, Salwa, whose husband is in Belmarsh on terrorism charges. Salwa convinces Mumtaz of her husband's innocence and persuades her to go undercover to prove it. But Salwa is not what she seems. Trapped in an old tunnel that leads to the London docks, will Mumtaz escape with her life?

December 29, 1940, the night Hitler has chosen to destroy London. His main target- St Paul 's Cathedral - is where undertaker Francis Hancock is sheltering from the onslaught. But the troubled First World War veteran has more than the Luftwaffe to contend with on this terifying night; a young girl, who has also chosen to shelter in the cathedral, mysteriously vanishes. As the bombs continue to fall, some of those charged with guarding the famous lanmark are brutally murdered. Is a cold-blooded predator taking advantage of the chaos to settle old scores? And have they taken the girl? Hancock must overcome his own demons if he is to stand a chance of surviving this night and catching a killer ...

Detective and mystery stories. When Emine Aksu, the flamboyant wife of an Istanbul style guru, suddenly goes missing, Inspector Cetin Ikmen's investigation leads him deep into her strange and colourful past. Emine was a hippie when she was younger, who wholeheartedly enjoyed the liberated lifestyle that swept across Istanbul in the sixties. Her husband suspects that she was visiting an old friend at the time of her disappearance. Meanwhile, Inspector Mehmet Suleyman is called to a terrifying scene at the art deco Kamondo Stairs in the old banking district of Karakoy. The skeleton of a woman has been discovered in one of the large plant containers. Could these two bizarre incidents be linked?

In the dark days of the Blitz, crime goes undercover... It is October 1940 and undertaker Francis Hancock is called out to Epping Forest to attend to the corpse of a young gypsy girl who has died suddenly. At the wake, a gypsy named Lily claims to see a vision of the 'Blessed Virgin'. Meanwhile the Military Police are looking for a German spy - Martin Stojka - who they believe is a Nazi spy.Then Lily is found stabbed through the chest. Could it be a crime of passion or cold-bloodedmurder? Is Martin Stojka who he says he is? There is someone lurking in the shadows who will stop at nothing to find what Martin has in his possession...

In the shadow of St Pauls, Arnold and Hakim are drawn into an investigation involving an old man and a newborn baby.

Summer in Istanbul is hot. The kind of heat that can drive even the sanest people a little crazy...An elderly woman is found dead in a flat with the perfectly preserved body of a young man. In an ancient part of the Jewish quarter, two children are missing. Their father, an artist whose genius borders on insanity, only seems more driven in his work. And a raid on a Russian gangster yields nothing except the dead body of a girl he claims is his daughter. Could the connection to all cases lie in a macabre forgotten art? But Inspector Cetin Ikmen's worries aren't just work-related. His protege, Suleyman, is going dangerously off the rails, threatening to compromise not just himself but months of painstaking investigation. Ikmen faces a complex case which threatens to rock the very fabric of Turkish society.

The body of a teenage girl is discovered in a cistern deep below the city of Istanbul. For the Turkish police force's most talented officer, Inspector A etin Ikmen, this is a difficult case. The girl was his daughter's friend and her attire, that of a nineteenth-century Ottoman, offers no easy explanation.With his promise of justice to the dead girl's mother still fresh on his lips, Ikmen is suddenly taken off the case and reassigned to the kidnapping of an ageing movie star's wife. The star is hiding something and so, Ikmen fears, are his superiors. A powerful secret exists in the labyrinthine city; one which those on either side of the law will do anything to prevent surfacing...

The powerful third novel from one of crime fictions most original talents

British author Nadel's deep passion for Turkish culture and her intimate knowledge of that land come through vividly in this riveting crime drama set in present-day Istanbul, but with roots in two of the last century's epic bloodbaths. Police Inspector Aetin Ikmen, alcoholic, chain-smoking, but somehow endearing, looks into the brutal murder and disfigurement of an aged Jewish immigrant that appears to have neo-Nazi implications. With his youthful colleague Mehmet Suleyman in tow, Ikmen leads us through the back alleys, brothels and barrooms of the city's roughest neighborhoods in an absorbing investigation that involves suspects of many nationalities and mental states, each suffering from a different form of madness or obsession. Midway through their complicated inquiry, Ikmen declares that the case is like reconstructing "a shattered mirror" whose pieces have flown off in many different directions. With rapid scene shifts and a constantly changing cast of characters, that mirror is gradually pieced back together to provide a glimpse of the gory end of the tsarist regime in Russia nearly a century ago, and the ongoing terrors of those who survived the carnage only to relive it in their minds. Stunning final twists in this disturbing tale suggest that history's cycles of violence and evil will continue unabated. FYI: This is the author's first book to be published in the U.S.

With a fascinating and topical background, the powerful fourth novel from one of crime fictions outstanding writers

In the summer of 1976, young John Saunders disappeared in Woolwich Foot Tunnel. Forty-two years later he re-emerges, complete with an American accent. Whilst a DNA test confirms his identity, his story does not ring true... what really happened and why has he come back?

The triumphantly accomplished second novel by award-winning author Barbara Nadel

?Inteligente y cautivadora recuerda Aurelio Zende Michael Dibdin.? The Sunday TimesEl cadáver del joven Rifat aparece decapitado en las aguas del Bósforo. El inspector Ikmen, al indagar en el suceso, se ve envuelto en una trama de antiguas vendetas que le revelan secretos de su propia familia. La intriga aumenta cuando el forense encuentra una herida en el cadaver que evidencia la extirpacion de un riñon. Este hecho guia al equipo de investigadores policiales por las profundidades y los entresijos de clanes, mafias y personajes extraños. Por la ausencia de huellas dactilares del muerto y sin ninguna pista fiable, el inspector Ikmen y su equipo siguen el rastro del organo que sospechan fue vendido por dinero. Aguas profundas es una novela policiaca situada en la Turquia del siglo XXI. El ambiente y la cultura de Estambul descritos con gran detalle y pasion por Barbara Nadel envuelven al lector y lo acompañan a las profundas neblinas de la trepidante accion de esta novela negra.Barbara Nadel, nacida en el Est End de Londres, es una enamorada de Turquia donde viaja desde hace mas de veinte años. Ha publicado seis novelas ambientadas en la capital turca, entre ellas, La Hija de Baltasar, tambien publicada en El Aleph y Aguas profundas. Su trabajo como asesora con enfermos mentales en un hospital psiquiatrico y en escuelas con adolescentes que han sufrido abusos sexuales ha influido en la profundidad de los personajes de sus novelas. En la actualidad trabaja en el Departamento de relaciones publicas del Good Companions Service de la National Schizophrenia Fellowship.

Any bloody death will lead Inspectors Cetin Ikmen and Mehmet Suleyman out onto the dark streets of Istanbul. On 21 January, a half-decapitated corpse in the poor multicultural district of Tarlabasi poses a particularly frustrating and gruesome mystery. But as the months pass and the violence increases, it turns into a hunt for that rare phenomenon in the golden city on the Bosphorus: a serial killer. Desperate to uncover the killer's twisted logic as the body count rises, Ikmen and Suleyman find only more questions. How are the victims connected? What is the significance of the number 21? And how many Istanbullus must die before they find the answers?

In the shadow of St Pauls, Arnold and Hakim are drawn into aninvestigation involving an old man and a newborn baby.