Investigator Yashim travels to Venice in the latest installment of the Edgar® Award–winning author Jason Goodwin’s captivating series
Jason Goodwin’s first Yashim mystery, The JanissaryTree, brought home the Edgar® Award for Best Novel. His follow-up, The Snake Stone, more than lived up to expectations and was hailed by Marilyn Stasio in The New York Times Book Review as “a magic carpet ride to the most exotic place on earth.” Now, in The Bellini Card, Jason Goodwin takes us back into his “intelligent, gorgeous and evocative” (The Independenton Sunday) world, as dazzling as a hall of mirrors and utterly compelling.
Istanbul, 1840: the new sultan, Abdülmecid, has heard a rumor that Bellini’s vanished masterpiece, a portrait of Mehmet the Conqueror, may have resurfaced in Venice. Yashim, our eunuch detective, is promptly asked to investigate, but—aware that the sultan’s advisers are against any extravagant repurchase of the painting— decides to deploy his disempowered Polish ambassador friend, Palewski, to visit Venice in his stead. Palewski arrives in disguise in down-and-out Venice, where a killer is at large as dealers, faded aristocrats, and other unknown factions seek to uncover the whereabouts of the missing Bellini.
But is it the Bellini itself that endangers all, or something associated with its original loss? And why is it that all the killer’s victims are somehow tied to the alluring Contessa d’Aspi d’Istria? Will the Austrians unmask Palewski, or will the killer find him first? Only Yashim can uncover the truth behind the manifold mysteries.
Starred Review Intrigue, treachery, and murder infuse early-nineteenth-century European society, and only one savvy eunuch, Inspector Yashim of Istanbul, can navigate the serpentine political connections and hidden agendas, as evidenced in The Janissary Tree (2006) and The Snake Stone (2007). Now, with the death of the old sultan, the pashas are jockeying for power. When the new sultan, young Abdulmecid, orders Yashim to Venice to retrieve the lost portrait of Mahmut the Conqueror, the sly vizier Resid tries to nix the plan. Yashim secretly sends his friend Palewski instead, who royally bungles the assignment. Reluctantly, Yashim comes to the rescue and nimbly skirts certain death in the canal, bests the violent but lovely Contessa d’Aspi d’Istria, sets the local constabulary to rights, and discovers the truth about Mahmut, his portrait, and its secrets. Yashim’s adventure in Venice is a toothsome, wryly humorous, and historically accurate view of La Serenissima, seen through the eyes of a very unusual man: a Turkish eunuch as adept with a sword as a kitchen knife and who bemoans the loss of his beloved old friend, Sultan Mahmut II. Goodwin vividly evokes Istanbul embroiled in change, like Jenny White’s The Sultan’s Seal (2005) and Katie Hickman’s The Aviary Gate (2008), and he delivers a visceral experience of historical Venice similar to David Hewson’s Lucifer’s Shadow (2004). --Jen Baker
Description:
Investigator Yashim travels to Venice in the latest installment of the Edgar® Award–winning author Jason Goodwin’s captivating series
Jason Goodwin’s first Yashim mystery, The Janissary Tree, brought home the Edgar® Award for Best Novel. His follow-up, The Snake Stone, more than lived up to expectations and was hailed by Marilyn Stasio in The New York Times Book Review as “a magic carpet ride to the most exotic place on earth.” Now, in The Bellini Card, Jason Goodwin takes us back into his “intelligent, gorgeous and evocative” (The Independent on Sunday) world, as dazzling as a hall of mirrors and utterly compelling.
Istanbul, 1840: the new sultan, Abdülmecid, has heard a rumor that Bellini’s vanished masterpiece, a portrait of Mehmet the Conqueror, may have resurfaced in Venice. Yashim, our eunuch detective, is promptly asked to investigate, but—aware that the sultan’s advisers are against any extravagant repurchase of the painting— decides to deploy his disempowered Polish ambassador friend, Palewski, to visit Venice in his stead. Palewski arrives in disguise in down-and-out Venice, where a killer is at large as dealers, faded aristocrats, and other unknown factions seek to uncover the whereabouts of the missing Bellini.
But is it the Bellini itself that endangers all, or something associated with its original loss? And why is it that all the killer’s victims are somehow tied to the alluring Contessa d’Aspi d’Istria? Will the Austrians unmask Palewski, or will the killer find him first? Only Yashim can uncover the truth behind the manifold mysteries.
From Publishers Weekly
Near the start of Edgar-winner Goodwin's fine third historical to feature the eunuch Yashim, who serves the Ottoman rulers of early 19th-century Turkey (after 2008's The Snake Stone), Yashim's close friend Stanislaw Palewski, the Polish ambassador to the Turkish sultan, accepts an undercover assignment on the sultan's behalf. Posing as an American, the diplomat travels to Venice in an effort to locate a portrait of Mehmet the Conqueror (who reclaimed Constantinople from the Christians in 1453), painted by the legendary artist Gentile Bellini. Fortunately for Palewski, Yashim, who has a secret plan for the painting's recovery, intervenes in time to set the mission on the right track after the murder of two art dealers. While Yashim initially plays a backstage role, the eunuch and a shadowy power broker engage in an exciting and complex duel of wits in the book's final quarter. Once again, Goodwin skillfully blends deduction, action sequences and period color. (Mar.)
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From Booklist
Starred Review Intrigue, treachery, and murder infuse early-nineteenth-century European society, and only one savvy eunuch, Inspector Yashim of Istanbul, can navigate the serpentine political connections and hidden agendas, as evidenced in The Janissary Tree (2006) and The Snake Stone (2007). Now, with the death of the old sultan, the pashas are jockeying for power. When the new sultan, young Abdulmecid, orders Yashim to Venice to retrieve the lost portrait of Mahmut the Conqueror, the sly vizier Resid tries to nix the plan. Yashim secretly sends his friend Palewski instead, who royally bungles the assignment. Reluctantly, Yashim comes to the rescue and nimbly skirts certain death in the canal, bests the violent but lovely Contessa d’Aspi d’Istria, sets the local constabulary to rights, and discovers the truth about Mahmut, his portrait, and its secrets. Yashim’s adventure in Venice is a toothsome, wryly humorous, and historically accurate view of La Serenissima, seen through the eyes of a very unusual man: a Turkish eunuch as adept with a sword as a kitchen knife and who bemoans the loss of his beloved old friend, Sultan Mahmut II. Goodwin vividly evokes Istanbul embroiled in change, like Jenny White’s The Sultan’s Seal (2005) and Katie Hickman’s The Aviary Gate (2008), and he delivers a visceral experience of historical Venice similar to David Hewson’s Lucifer’s Shadow (2004). --Jen Baker