Yashim, a eunuch formerly attached to the Sultan’s palace in Istanbul (as a eunuch not the only thing he was formerly attached to!), is summoned by the Sultan to look into the mysterious death of a guardsman whose remains are found in a huge cauldron. One death soon becomes two and before long Yashim finds himself at the heart of something very suspicious. With the help of Stainslav Palewski the bumbling Polish ambassador and Preen – a high class hooker for want of a better description, Yashim tries to find the culprit before another murder is committed and in doing so unearths a twenty-year grievance….
Set in Ottoman Istanbul in the 1830s, I suppose one would class “The Janissary Tree” as a historical detective novel. The attention to detail and the authenticity seems hard to fault and knowing that the author Jason Goodwin is an expert on things Ottoman ought to persuade the reader that things are correct.
