The Baklava Club

by Jason Goodwin Book 5 in the Yashim the Ottoman Detective series.

First published 2014

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3.9(1,337)

Istanbul, 1842. Three young Italian liberals living in exile receive orders to assassinate a Polish prince but fail to carry out the killing, kidnapping him instead and hiding him at an abandoned farmhouse. The conspirators believe they are serving the cause of national liberation, unaware that their revolutionary cell has been penetrated and that messages signed by La Piuma—the Feather—are directing them towards disaster.

Yashim is convinced that the prince remains alive and begins tracing the exiles, their contacts and the false orders that control them. His investigation unfolds across a city where Polish émigrés, Italian nationalists and Ottoman officials live within the wider contest between European liberalism and autocratic rule. A new love affair distracts Yashim as the identity of La Piuma turns the final case into the most personal danger of his career.