The Janissary Tree Jason Goodwin June 2011

Korea was fifty years ago. MASH was done with its third series of reruns twenty-five years ago. Korea is old news – grandparent’s news. Time to move forward with world events.
Strange as it may seem by calendar dates, “The Janissary Tree“ may be far more relevant to today’s reader: Ottoman Empire; Istanbul in 1836 (see earlier picture below); Muslim Sufi sects from Turkey to Egypt; and the legacies of the early nineteenth century French and USA revolutionary period. (See last month’s review of “Island Beneath the Sea.”
This Janissary book is also a much better device (fiction) for dispensing background facts and figures. This particular author is a master cradtsman at weaving interesting historical tidbits into a murder mystery story.
And there are tittalating factors which I only now bring up, such as the subtitle of the book, “Yashim, the Eunuch Series -- #1.” OK, wait a minute; we got the #1 bit and that’s good – it’s going to be a series which all of us readers love, but what’s this other bit about the Eunuch – is the author going to explore into the history, beginnings, feelings, emotions, and love-life of a Eunuch.?.

Well Yes.
Yashim is sort of a mix between Sherlock Holmes’s deductive powers; Sam Spade’s street smarts; and Spenser’s savoir-faire, but of course as a eunuch, he adds a touch not found in any other male hero character. He is able to walk freely within the harem, all segments of cultured Islamic society; and also within the endless variety of homosexual men living in metropolitan Istanbul.
The plotline isn’t as complicated as one might assume with all these characters. The Janissaries, who were Sufi-led soldier regiments, not unlike Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi army in Iraq, seem to be trying to become a political force again. Their sign is a series of bizarre murders. Yashim is called upon by what we’d call the Secretary of Defense to solve the murders and uncover any plot brewing. There are many sub-plots: relationships with Slavic ambassadors; Poles and Russians {the wife of one makes him tingle??(where); and friendship with the madam (male) of a boys dance troupe (erotic/exotic).
It’s always hard to get the frequency of foreign words just right in an historical novel like this: too many strange words becomes laborious and we set it aside; not enough and we feel that the proper research wasn’t done – the work’s not authentic. This author, Jason Goodwin, has hit a perfect balance. He has after all, penned a non-fiction history on the subject, “Lords of the Horizons: A History of the Ottoman Empire.”
It’s like the difference between Patrón and Jose Cuervo tequila; Ottoman Empire or North Korea: smooth and easy versus hard and gritty. It’s your choice.