Frank S. (colonelstech) reviewed on 1/27/2014 + 38 more book reviews

Outstanding novel by an master story-teller, January 27, 2014. The author, Jason Goodwin, is an historian first, and now a superb novelist, whose mystery adventures of Yashim, the Sultan's eunuch detective in 1830s Istanbul of the Ottoman Empire, have all become best-sellers. Goodwin, Cambridge-educated scholar of Byzantine history, traced the pathways of the Europeans through the Turkish crossroads between Asia and Europe, and knows the sights, sounds, smells, and feel of the places he deftly sets as his backdrop for mysteries and adventures high and low. His first novel in the Yashim series, "The Janissary Tree," won the Edgar Allen Poe Award for Best Novel in 2007, which is a bit of a pity, because to my mind each novel of the admirable Yashim (the second was "The Snake Stone") has been better than the last. I loved every one. Goodwin's third tale of the adventures of Yashim, "The Bellini Card," is simply outstanding, and for many reasons, my favorite.
Other reviews on these pages give you Yashim's exotic back-story; the emasculated lad, trained as a court adviser, who becomes the wise and stalwart investigator for Sultans, the supreme rulers of the marvelous Ottoman Empire. The Sublime Porte (the court of the Ottoman Empire) is declining, but the first half of the 1800s (not unlike today) Istanbul remains near the center of global Eurasian affairs. After centuries of dominion. from the gates of Vienna to the Indus, Turkey is still a fulcrum in conflicts among its powerful neighbors. Yashim is exactly a man of his times and place, and he moves deftly, at times invisibly, among beggars and nobility, solving problems for the Sultans as knotty as the well-named Turk's Head.
The Bellini of the title is a 1400s portrait of Mehmet, conqueror of Constantinople in 1453, lost, but rumored to be on the market in Venice. The young new Ottoman Sultan, Abdulmecid, requires Yashim to sail to Venice, find the portrait of his ancestor, and buy it. The power behind the throne, the young Vizir, Resid Pasha, broadly hints to Yashim that such a trip would be both futile and deadly.
Goodwin cleverly weaves the historical alliances and rivalries between past rulers of these two most exotic settings, Istanbul and Venice, into the warp of his story, and embroiders his plot with delicious historical plausibilities that make the Bellini mission both diplomatically and personally critical for the success of the young Sultan's reign. Failure could imperil the Empire. No pressure, Yashim.
Among his admirable qualities, Yashim's love and respect for friends and strangers yet again becomes a principle weapon against his enemies. Yashim is not merely a sleuth's sleuth. He is a deft master of sword, knife, and mano-a-mano wrestling, with opponents of either sex. He cooks mouth-watering meals. He knows art, religions, history, and diplomacy and applies his insightful wisdom to his solutions. He is unfailingly as courteous as the most fastidious courtier (which officially, he is), and his manners could serve a lesson to the best English butler. Sadly lacking in one respect, in others he is most assuredly a man of parts. Best of all, the reader will relish every moment of his company.
Goodwin tips his novelist's hat to Yashim's modern Venetian sleuths. Donna Leon's Commissioner Guido Brunetti is foreshadowed in a police inspector as much troubled (and as much undefeated) by his 19th Century Austrian superior's as Leon's Brunetti is by today's modern Roman masters. The old and noble Venetian family of Zen, marvelously brought to 20th Century life in the late Michael Dibdin's Aurelio Zen series, plays a minor role in Yashim's adventures in and among the famous Venetian canals. Fans of Dibdin and Leon's Venetians will feel very much at home in Goodwin's descriptions of a Venice 200 years younger, but, than as now, as hauntingly old as its stones.
Not everyone seems to have loved this book as much as me. Not everyone can stand eggplant. Give Goodwin and Yashim, his friends, adversaries, and adventures, a taste, and I think you will grow to love them.

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