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Since he first appeared in English translation, in 1994's Happy Birthday, Turk!, Jakob Arjouni's downbeat detective Kemel Kayankaya has proved as enigmatic as Columbo, as erudite as Marlowe and occasionally, as crazed as Hammett's Continental Op. A Turkish orphan raised in Frankfurt, his missions have led him into parts of society where only an outcast can survive, and while getting down among the gangsters, hookers and barflies he has held up a mirror to contemporary Germany.

In Kismet, that world is in violent flux, thanks to the Balkans conflict and the arrival of its warlords. Kayankaya sees their methods first-hand when his friend Romario's bar is targeted by a couple of trigger-happy blonde mutes calling themselves the Army of Reason. The bloody trail leads to a poisonous soup manufacturer, a cell of nationalist Croats and a grim hostel where Bosnian refugee Leila desperately needs help. Arjouni forges both a gripping caper and a haunting indictment of the madness of nationalism, illuminated by brilliant use of language: magnificent.

Cathi Unsworth