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Kayankaya Thriller #1

Jakob Arjouni

Translated by Anselm Hollo
Part of Melville International Crime

When a Turkish laborer is stabbed to death in Frankfurt’s red light district, the local police see no need to work over-time. But wisecracking private detective Kemel Kayankaya, a Turkish immigrant himself, smells a rat. The dead man wasn’t the ind of guy who spent time with prostitutes. What gives?

The deeper he digs, the more Kayankaya finds that the victim was a good guy, a poor immigrant just trying to look out for his family. So who wanted him dead, and why? On the way to finding out, Kayankaya has run-ins with prostitutes and drug addicts, gets beaten up by anonymous thugs, survives a gas attack, and suffers several close encounters with a Fiat.

And then there’s the police cover-up he stumbles upon…

JAKOB ARJOUNI was born in Frankfurt in 1964, the son of acclaimed German playwright Hans Gunter Michelson. He has written numerous books, including the novel Magic Hoffmann, which was shortlisted for the IMPAC Award. But it is his series of four mysteries featuring Turkish immigrant detective Kemal Kayankaya—all of which are being published by Melville House—for which he has become best known. Bestsellers throughout Europe and the winner of the German Thriller Prize, they have also been turned into wildly popular movies in his home country. Arjouni now divides his time between Berlin and Languedoc.

ANSELM HOLLO is the author of more than thirty books, most recently the essay collection Caws & Causeries and Notes on the Possibilities and Attraction of Existence: New and Selected Poems 1965-2000, which received the San Francisco Poetry Center's Book Award for 2001.

"A worthy grandson of Marlowe and Spade."
—Der Stern 

"Jakob Arjouni writes the best urban thrillers since Raymond Chandler."
—Tempo 

"Pitch-black noir."
—La Depeche 

"A genuine storyteller who beguiles his readers without the need of tricks."
—L'Unita


PRAISE FOR KISMET 

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

"If you like your investigators tough and sassy, Kayankaya is your guide."
—Sunday Times of London


PRAISE FOR ONE MAN, ONE MURDER

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

"Sets a high standard for the crime novel as the best of modern literature."
—The Independent


PRAISE FOR MORE BEER

"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 Telegraph