Sunday 17 August 2008

Book of the week and Bibliography - Jason Goodwin, The Bellini Card


Jason Goodwin's Ottoman Eunuch sleuth, Yashim, made his appearance in the 2007 novel The Janissary Tree, which won the Edgar Award for best mystery. The third book in the series, The Bellini Card, has just appeared. It takes Yashim from the winding alleyways of Istanbul to the decaying grandeur of Venice. Charged by the Sultan to find a stolen painting by Bellini, he enlists the help of his friend Palewski, the Polish Ambassador, and goes undercover. Venice in 1840 is a city of empty palazzos and silent canals, and Palewski starts to mingle with Venetian dealers - self-made men, faded aristocrats and the hedonistic Contessa. But when two bodies turn up in the canal, he realises that art in Venice is a deadly business. These are enjoyable books which are steeped in the history of the Ottoman Empire – a series well worth collecting at this relatively early stage.

Bibliography

Lords of the Horizons – A History of the Ottoman Empire (Chatto and Windus, 1998)
Greenback – The Almighty Dollar and the Invention of America (Hamish Hamilton, 2003)


Yashim the Eunuch

The Janissary Tree (Faber, 2006)
The Snake Stone (Faber, 2007)
The Bellini Card (Faber, 2008)
An Evil Eye (Faber, 2011)

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