Brother Kemal (Melville International Crime) - Tapa blanda

Praise for Kismet

"As winning a noirish gumshoe as has swooped onto the mystery scene in some time." --Richard Lipez, The Washington Post

"In the emphasis on action and quck-jab dialogue, readers will notice an echo of James M. Cain and Raymond Chandler, but Arjouni's stories also brim with the absurd humor that made The Sopranos so entertaining." --Vikas Turakhia, The Plain Dealer (Cleveland)

"Jakob Arjouni's downbeat detective Kemel Kayankaya has proved as enigmatic as Columbo, as erudite as Marlowe and occasionally, as crazed as Hammett's Continental Op . . . Arjouni forges both a gripping caper and a haunting indictment of the madness of nationalism, illuminated by brilliant use of language: magnificent." --The Guardian

"This lively, gripping book sets a high standard for the crime novel as the best of modern literature." --The Independent

"With its snappy dialogue and rumpled heroes, Arjouni's crime fiction owes an obvious debt to American noir but it is equally reminiscent of many Eastern European satirical novels. The plot of Kismet may recall any number of gangster romps, but the society so caustically depicted here is as recognizable as that conjured up, for instance, by Jaroslav Hasek in The Good Soldier Schweik." --Anna Mudow, The Barnes & Noble Review

"Re-imagines the dull capital of the German financial industry as an urban hell where minority groups and crime bosses prey on one another with ruthless abandon." --The Daily Beast

"If you like your investigators tough and sassy, Kayankaya is your guide." --The Sunday Times (London)

"This is true hardboiled detective fiction, realistic, violent and occasionally funny, with a hero who lives up to the best traditions of the genre." --The Daily Telegraph

Praise for One Man, One Murder

"Kemal Kayankaya is the ultimate outsider among hard-boiled private eyes." --Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times Book Review

"A zippy, deliciously dirty tour of legal fleshpots and low-down scams victimizing illegal aliens . . . Plotted with verve and written with passion." --Kirkus Reviews

"The book is as hard-boiled as private eye stories come." --The Toronto Star

Praise for Happy Birthday, Turk!

"The greatest German mystery since World War II." --Süddeutsche (Germany)

International Praise for Jacob Arjouni's Kayankaya novels

"A worthy grandson of Marlowe and Spade." --Der Stern (Germany)

"Jakob Arjouni writes the best urban thrillers since Raymond Chandler." --Tempo (UK)

"A genuine storyteller who beguiles his readers without the need of tricks." --L'Unità (Italy)

"Arjouni is a master of authentic background descriptions and an original story teller." --SonntagsZeitung (Germany)

"Arjouni tells real-life stories, and they virtually never have a happy ending. He tells them so well, with such flexible dialogue and cleverly maintained tension, that it is impossible to put his books down." --El País (Spain)

"His virtuosity, humor and feeling for tension are a ray of hope in literature on the other side of the Rhine." --Actuel (France)

"Pitch-black noir." --La Depeche (France)

The return of Kemal Kayankaya, "The ultimate outsider among hard-boiled private eyes" (Marilyn Stasio in The New York Times Book Review)

"A master of crime fiction... The sardonic humor survives intact, the writing is energetic, the plot moves right along."
—The New York Times

OVER 1 MILLION COPIES SOLD WORLDWIDE

Jakob Arjouni's first novel, Happy Birthday, Turk!, was published when  its author was just twenty. The book and its beleaguered hero, Turkish-German  P.I., Kemal Kayankaya, instantly found an adoring audience around the world, and three more bestselling Kayankaya novels quickly followed.

More than twenty-five years after Arjouni’s debut—and after publishing a string of critically acclaimed literary novels—the author returns to his most beloved character. In Brother Kemal, we find 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.