The Bellini Card -- Jason Goodwin

O.K., this is the third book of a series: the investigator Yashim series. The series focuses on Istanbul in the late 1830’s, as the Ottoman Empire is declining and a new sultan takes power. Yashim, as a well-educated Eunuch, is a trusted and tactful personage in the palace. He has no specific role, but higher-ups call on him to solve mysteries that don’t fall into the normal responsibilities of governance.

For any author, the bar is always higher with each new murder mystery in a genre series like this one. Goodwin has deftly dealt with his readership’s lust for more and better, by introducing a second city, Venice, to contrast, compare, and develop similarities with Istanbul. As he points out, the two cities are both ancient, only four degrees of latitude apart, and only a few days boat ride away from each other.

Goodwin also beefs up the role of sidekick through development of the Polish diplomat, Stanislaw Palewski. This enhanced role is a good indication of Jason Goodwin’s maturing into authoring murder mystery novels. He has plopped in the classic, and recognizable, device of Arthur Conan Doyle’s periodic disguised appearance of Sherlock Holmes as a beggar in rags, totally surprising Watson, who has been sent off to stir up the natives.

In my opinion, this is the perfect way to teach: history, geography, cooking, sociology, art, and language. At the simpliest level, there is the plot line of a murder mystery. From this level, the writing is lyrical and pleasantly descriptive. In “The Bellini Card,” for the first time in the series, Yashim the Investigator, fights for his life several times, and turns out to be marvelously adept at the martial arts. This will be great for the movie version. Of course, even though he is a eunuch, his love-making dazzles a beautiful woman in each episode.

For the more curious reader, each page is a jumping off point for further personal research, investigation, and cogitation. It is fascinating for me to dig back with WikiPedia or Google to look more deeply at that period, especially with its merry-go-round changes in country names. I was a stamp collector last mid-century and Goodwin brings to my mind all those long forgotten country names.

I am no chef, but I am tempted to pull together all the recipes for what are simple country dishes, into Yashim’s cookbook, but I’m sure Jason has already sold the rights to that little goldmine . They sound delicious because of all the spices and herbs, but mostly because of the manual care in preparation that he describes.

The author, Jason Goodwin, appears to be an authentic renaissance man; a man who can carry on about the arts and culture of his chosen period as well as grasping past triggers for why things turned out as they did. As an author of genre novels, Goodwin treats his most curious readership to an after dinner trolley full of stimulating language usage, sprinkled with just the right amount of other Indo-European language phrases.