Ben Canaan doesn’t make a very good impression when we first meet him in A.E. Goldin’s dizzying new novel, Murder in Constantinople. He’s a proud member of the Good-For-Nothings, to his father’s despair, and is much more interested in causing a ruckus and getting one over on the richer residents of London. He’s got a decent life until he takes things too far and accidentally shoots a man in the leg. In an instant, Ben has to flee the country until things cool down.
Murder in Constantinople is one scrape after another for Ben Canaan, with increasingly dire stakes. To be honest, more than a few of these scrapes strains credulity. I was able to buy that Ben would be able to trade favors to get a fake passport and a trip on a steamer from London to Constantinople. (It was easier to fool the authorities in the 1850s.) It was harder to suspend my disbelief when it came to Ben managing to find exactly the person he needed in a city of millions, get witnesses to coherently cough up what they knew, or take a walk through the harem of the Topkapı Palace without any of the guards noticing.
Ben asked for a ticket to Constantinople in the hope that he might be able to find out what happened to a woman he loved and believed had died some years earlier, until he found a photo of her in the pocket of the Prime Minister’s coat. (See what I mean about suspending my disbelief? Ben has the luck of a Dickens protagonist.) This trail almost immediately leads Ben to being arrested by the Ottoman police after he turns up at a dead man’s lodgings. From there it’s one murder or double-crossing (plus one explosion) after another until the big climax at the Sultan‘s new Dolmabahçe Palace.
Murder in Constantinople reads more like a movie than a book; you’ll spend a lot of time visualizing fights and chases. Readers looking for a ripping yarn may enjoy it, though readers who’d like to know more about the Ottoman Empire or the Crimean War should look elsewhere. I’d’ve liked a bit more history in this thriller, as well as more character development, in this book.
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, for review consideration.
