Estimated read time: 3-4 minutes
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The Janissary Tree
By Jason Goodwin
Farrar, Straus & Giroux. 302 pp. $25
Reviewed by Rita Giordano
The year is 1836 and the place is Istanbul.
Europe is modernizing, and the sultan is about to announce great changes to the Ottoman Empire when a rash of mayhem threatens the stability of the court. A member of the sultan's harem is found strangled, and four cadets of the New Guard go missing.
As the cadets' bodies begin to appear, the details chillingly point to the Janissary Corps, the empire's elite soldiers, who after 400 years of amassing power were crushed by the sultan 10 years earlier. What if the Janissaries are plotting to seize power once more?
One man is called upon to find the answers. Meet Yashim Togalu, an intelligence officer uniquely qualified for his mission by virtue of his brilliance, his access, and, in ways, his invisibility.
Yashim, you see, is a eunuch. And The Janissary Tree by Jason Goodwin is our introduction to this uncommon sleuth, the first in a series. If the others are as good as this one, readers are in for a great ride.
This book is so much fun. It's history with cleverly applied modern-sensibility twists. It's a whodunit for people who don't usually like or read whodunits. My significant other, who loves history and seldom reads novels, robbed this one from me and wouldn't give it back until he finished it.
Yes, it's suspenseful; yes, it moves. Yes, it may put you on the edge of your seat. But Goodwin, unlike some practitioners of this genre, can actually write and he can definitely create characters, particularly ones adept at leading the reader into some pretty interesting places both literally and figuratively.
Take our detective, Yashim. He's resourceful, a thinking man, emotionally complex yet still tough in his own way, wry and, even sans testicles, is no slouch with the ladies. In The Janissary Tree, he romances another man's beautiful wife. A Russian, no less. This guy is definitely not your average eunuch.
He keeps interesting company: a seen-it-all Polish diplomat, a transsexual dancer, a queen mother with an agenda and a past, to name a few.
In part because Yashim is a eunuch, he is able to gain access to people and places another man could not, like the sultan's harem. A man with all the salient equipment would never be allowed in. Yashim can pass freely.
And what he shows us there and elsewhere is fascinating. One of Goodwin's past books was the well-received Lords of the Horizon: A History of the Ottoman Empire. He knows this world well, has studied it. His characters take us on great travels through the Istanbul of the times, its markets, cafes, back alleys, apartments and inner sanctums.
Even more interesting in some ways is the voyage back to the complex society of the empire at that time, and Yashim is a clever choice of guide - the insider who by his very nature will always be an outsider.
But back to the whodunit. Yashim gets himself into some jams. There are close calls. If they made the book into a movie, Yashim would have his tussle-with-the-baddies scenes. And although he is one smart guy, there's stuff he doesn't see coming, and probably neither will you. Those are all very good things. The last thing you want in a mystery is to suspect you know the answer from the beginning only to have it confirmed for you 300 or so pages later. Why bother?
The Janissary Tree is not at all predictable. It is a transporting, engaging book with a main character who works his way into your mind and heart.
I know I for one will be looking forward to his next adventure. That is, if my husband doesn't get to it before me.
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