The Winter Thief (Kamil Pasha Series #3)

by Jenny White

Overview

"A deftly plotted and clever tale of intrigue, duplicity, and violence."—Booklist, starred review

January 1888. Vera Arti carries The Communist Manifesto in Armenian through Istanbul's streets, unaware of the men following her. The police discover a shipload of guns, and the Imperial Ottoman Bank is blown up. Suspicion falls on a socialist commune that Arti's friends organized in the eastern mountains. Investigating, Special Prosecutor Kamil Pasha encounters a ruthless adversary in the secret police who has convinced the Sultan that the commune is leading an Armenian secessionist movement and should be destroyed, along with the surrounding villages. Kamil must stop the massacre, but he finds himself on the wrong side of the law, framed for murder and accused of treason, his family and the woman he loves threatened.

The Winter Thief explores the dark obsessions of the most powerful and dangerous men of the dying Ottoman Empire, as well as the era's mad idealism.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393338843
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	02/21/2011
Series:	Kamil Pasha Series , #3
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	400
Product dimensions:	5.36(w) x 8.14(h) x 1.02(d)

About the Author

Jenny White is the author of the Kamil Pasha series: The Sultan’s Sea (a finalist for the Ellis Peters Historical Crime Award), The Abyssinian Proof and The Winter Thief. She is a professor of anthropology at Boston University, specializing in Turkey.

Editorial Reviews

White…adroitly tosses in period detail as well as romance, political intrigue and brutal battle scenes. But The Winter Thief really distinguishes itself by the intelligence of its smaller moments, when characters take stock of their limitations against the larger demands of history.
—The Washington Post

Maureen Corrigan

Set in 1888, White’s gripping third thriller to feature Turkish detective Kamil Pasha (after The Abyssinian Proof) will appeal to fans of Laura Joh Rowland’s Japanese historical series. Like Rowland’s hero, Kamil serves as a special investigator for his country’s ruler (in his case, the sultan of the Ottoman empire), and he must compete for influence with a ruthless and powerful rival. The discovery of a shipment of illegal arms and an explosion and robbery at the Imperial Ottoman Bank compound the sultan’s fears about threats to his rule. The challenges mount for Kamil when Vahid, the vicious head of the secret police, frames him for murder before Kamil can go to the Choruh Valley to find out whether a socialist commune is actually a base for revolutionaries. Vahid plots to gain even more control over the empire by being put in charge of a new intelligence service. While there’s no mystery about who committed the crimes, the atmospherics and period detail are first-rate. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

"Starred Review. White’s best book to date."

Booklist