Barbara nadel ikmen series

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Barbara nadel turkish detective
Barbara nadel fantastic fiction

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Nadel, Barbara

PERSONAL: Born in London, England.

ADDRESSES: Agent—c/o Author Mail, St. Martin's Press, 175 5th Ave., New York, NY 10010.

CAREER: Writer. Has worked as an actress, teacher, and mental health worker. Former public relations officer for National Schizophrenia Fellowship Good Companions Project.

WRITINGS:

MYSTERY NOVELS

Belshazzar's Daughter: A Mystery of Istanbul, Headline (London, England), 1999, Thomas Dunne Books (New York, NY), 2003.

A Chemical Prison, Headline Book (London, England), 2000, published as The Ottoman Cage: A Novel of Istanbul, Thomas Dunne Books (New York, NY), 2005

Arabesk, Headline Book (London, England), 2001.

Deep Waters, Headline Books (London, England), 2002.

Harem, Headline Book (London, England), 2003.

Petrified, Headline Book (London, England), 2004.

Deadly Web, Headline Book (London, England), 2005.

Last Rights, Headline Book (London, England), 2005.

SIDELIGHTS: Barbara Nadel was born in London, but her frequent visits to see relatives in Turkey throughout the years influenced her first novel to

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Arabesk

June 13, 2017

I'm afraid I'm not much impressed with this book. Nadel clearly knows and loves Istanbul and Turkey, which is sweet. However, textually the narrative is stuck in liminality, whereby the story is very Turkish but the voice/tone is very English. Not that it's wrong or bad, it's just that it's odd and somewhat out of place. Another issue is about the city narratives of Istanbul. Many writers, enchanted by Istanbul, seek to portray its exotic, mysterious, romantic, dark, etc. nature (because they love the place and I can't help but agree with them). Yet, despite the appropriateness of the setting for detective genre, the contemporary novelists try to do too much at once. (I feel the same way for most of Ahmet Umit's crime fiction set in Istanbul.) Tough balance to keep, especially since, as by nature, crime fiction should be tightly and neatly narrated to keep the focus and tension.

Still, non-Turkish readers might find the work a bit more impressive than I have as a nice, light read.

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Barbara Nadel

English crime-writer

Barbara Nadel is an English crime and historical fiction author and former healthcare professional. She is best known for her Inspector İkmen series of novels set in Istanbul, Turkey, and her Francis Hancock series set in the East End of London. She has also written the Hakim and Arnold and the Ten Bells Street series, the latter under the pen nameMary Collins.^[1]^[2]

Early life

Nadel was born and raised in the East End of London in the 1960s and 1970s.^[3] Her father had lived through World War II and witnessed the carpet bombing during The Blitz in the early 1940s.^[4] As a young child, she wanted to be an Egyptologist when she grows up.^[1] She frequently visited the local library to borrow books.^[5] "With no real gardens to play in", Nadel and her friends would "explore any other strange buildings we might find on our sojourns out to play in the street. Disused railway buildings, derelict houses, abandoned sheds" and even "on what we called 'bomb sites', massive