Brother Kemal ─ A Kayankaya Thriller

After more than 25 years, the return of Kemal Kayankaya, "The ultimate outsider among hard-boiled private eyes" (Marilyn Stasio in The New York Times Book Review).

Jakob Arjouni's first novel—Happy Birthday, Turk!—was published when he was just eighteen. The book and its beleaguered hero, Turkish P.I. Kemal Kayankaya, instantly found an adoring audience throughout Europe, and three more bestselling Kayankaya novels quickly followed.

Now, more than twenty-five years later—after publishing a string of critically acclaimed literary novels—Arjouni returns to his most beloved character, Kayankaya ... who finds that while things in Frankfurt have gotten glitzier, it's still the ugliest town in all of Germany, and the city's underworld has hardly changed at all.

Valerie de Chavannes, a financier's daughter, summons Kayankaya to her villa in Frankfurt's diplomat's quarter and commissions him to find her missing sixteen-year-old daughter. She is alleged to be with an older man who is posing as an artist. To Kayankaya, it seems like a simple case: an upper class girl with a taste for adventure.

Then another seemingly posh job turns up: a major publisher needs to protect a writer who has offended Islamist groups during the Frankfurt Book Fair.

The two cases seem to be straightforward, but it goes all wrong for Kayankaya, as it almost always does. Luckily, that's when he's at his best.

JAKOB ARJOUNI was born in Frankfurt, Germany in 1964, the son of acclaimed German playwright Hans Gunter Michelson. He has written numerous books, including the novel Magic Hoffmann, which was shortlisted for the IMPAC Award. But it is his series of four mysteries featuring Turkish immigrant detective Kemal Kayankaya—all of which are published by Melville House—for which he has become best known. Bestsellers throughout Europe and the winner of the German Thriller Prize, they have also been turned into wildly popular movies in his home country. Arjouni passed away in January, 2013. Brother Kemal was his final book.

ANTHEA BELL is one of the world's most acclaimed translators, best known for her translations of the French Asterix comics and a translator of Stefan Zweig and W.G. Sebald.