The Janissary Tree

Istanbul, 1836. Ten years after Sultan Mahmud II destroyed the Janissary corps, four officers of the modern New Guard disappear shortly before a major military review. Yashim, a eunuch intelligence agent whose position lets him move between the palace, markets and private households, is ordered to find them without exposing weakness inside the sultan’s westernising army.

The missing men are connected to a sequence of political murders, stolen imperial jewels and signs that surviving Janissaries are preparing to reverse Mahmud’s reforms. With help from the Polish ambassador Palewski, Yashim follows the conspiracy through Istanbul’s guilds, barracks and harem. The investigation becomes a contest over whether the Ottoman state will continue its transformation or return to a military order the sultan believed he had erased.