A naked teenage girl is found dead near the beautiful Byzantine Yoros Castle in Turkey. She has stabbed herself through the heart but there is evidence of bizarre sexual practice. In another part of Istanbul, a young boy sems to have committed suicide in similar circumstances. What dark rituals could have compelled them to fatal self-abuse? Inspectors Cetin Ikmen and Mehmet Suleyman follow an internet trail that leads them to an underworld of Goth nightclubs and Satanic worship. But even those murkey shadows hide more than they reveal and the answers to an ever increasing number of suspicious deaths is more shocking and terrible than they could ever have imagined.

SUMMARY: Confined to his home on sick-leave (and prevented from sneaking his beloved brandy and cigars), Inspector Ikmen of the Istanbul police is forced to hand his latest case over to his prot,g,, the newly promoted Suleyman. That?s too bad, because the aristocratic Suleyman knows nothing about Arabesk, the throbbing, deeply sentimental music that is adored by Turkey?s working classes, and the case is drenched in those mournful melodies. A secret marriage, a murdered bride, an aging beauty, a father driven mad with grief and guilt?it?s all so melodramatic that Suleyman can barely keep his lip from curling. Ikmen, unashamed of his own plebeian tastes, is happy to weigh in from the sidelines, but both cops eventually come to one conclusion: At the real heart of this operatic catastrophe is the city itself.

The body of a teenage girl is discovered in a cistern deep below the city of Istanbul. For the Turkish police force’s most talented officer, Inspector Çetin Ikmen, this is a difficult case. The girl was his daughter’s friend and her attire, that of a nineteenth-century Ottoman, offers no easy explanation.With his promise of justice to the dead girl’s mother still fresh on his lips, Ikmen is suddenly taken off the case and reassigned to the kidnapping of an ageing movie star’s wife. The star is hiding something and so, Ikmen fears, are his superiors. A powerful secret exists in the labyrinthine city; one which those on either side of the law will do anything to prevent surfacing...

Irving Levy is a man with few roots and, now that he is terminally ill, is anxious to find anyone to whom he can leave his considerable property. When he learns that there may be more to the disappearance of his younger sister, who disappeared when she was a baby, he engages the services of Hakim and Arnold to investigate. Unwittingly in mortal danger, the private detectives and Levy enter the world of Barking Park Fair and the secrets its brightly coloured attractions conceal. Secrets that lead them not just back to a crime committed in 1963, but to the chaotic world of post-war Europe where few people were what they seemed.

A body is discovered in a cave in the remote region of Cappadocia, Turkey. The woman died of gunshot wounds, and her corpse has lain undisturbed for twenty years. Inspector Cetin Ikmen is summoned from Istanbul to investigate and discovers a complex web of intrigue. Was she killed by her boyfriend, driven mad by love, or her husband, believing she would never bear the son he wanted so badly? When it is revealed the girl was pregnant when she died, the whispers and accusations increase. Ikmen, stifled among a rural community thriving on folklore and intrigue, begins to think he will never see clearly through the lies surrounding this case. One thing, however, is clear: the past is as potent as the present.

In the dark days of the Blitz, crime goes undercover … Undertaker Francis Hancock has seen the worst that humanity can do to itself. Why then does the murder of a young gypsy girl in Epping Forest move him so much? Travellers, gypsies, the homeless, deserters and German spies inhabit this stretch of open ground that was once her home. Francis knows it’s not wise to delve into this human melting pot, but he is drawn to the exotic customs of the gypsies, their music and magic. But as he investigates the girl’s murder further, the death toll rises and Francis uncovers a much bigger conspiracy, at the heart of which lies something even Adolf Hitler is prepared to kill for …