The Kiss Murder

Without naming names, Buse tells the owner of the transvestite night club where she hangs out that she still has letters and photos from a youthful liaison with an important public figure who very much wants the evidence to disappear. The next day, Buse is murdered but the police are uninterested, so the only way to find the murderer is to find the letters and photos.

A fascinating narrator and some very funny scenes in this thriller set in an interesting milieu. Unfortunately the font in this ebook was unable to cope with Turkish diacritics, which was distracting at times.

Stylish, charismatic, could be described as vapid. Entertaining and refreshingly free of an airtight plot.

When I saw a review calling the sleuth in The Kiss Murder "Istanbul's Miss Marple," I was intrigued. I like Turkish mysteries. I love Miss Marple. What could be better? Though the nameless sleuth is, in some ways, like Miss Marple, picture Miss Marple as a transvestite nightclub owner in Istanbul and you'll get a feel for The Kiss Murder.

I've read over 1,600 mysteries but I can honestly say I've never read a mystery like The Kiss Murder. Parts of it were fun and entertaining. Some parts, not so much. Even though I thought it was only okay to good, I think it has great potential and I've already bought the next one in the Turkish Delights series.

The Kiss Murders is probably not for everyone but it is entertaining in an odd sort of way.

I will give it 3 stars and actually explain why. Certainly the combination of transvestites and drag queens (working girls, really) with Istanbul places this book on a shelf of its own. It deserves some attention due to the unusual characters and settings, though the descriptions of some seem highly unlikely, having grown up in Istanbul. The "girls" certainly seem to enjoy a freedom and lack of abuse that I find incredulous. As open-minded as Istanbul dwellers may be... uhm, not really. And of course, the men... the copious amount of men running after, pining after the main character seems rather unlikely, no matter how stunningly Audrey Hepburn she may be. Don't get me wrong, we are talking about an Istanbul where the transvestites show more were on so much demand (from the married, straight manly men, of course) that the other prostitutes were ratting them out to eh police to take back the market! So I am not saying that it is unlikely that macho Turkish men would be pining after our heroine, here, but rather that they would be so readily accepting it in public when, say, someone mentions it, or they would just simply blush when their desire is found out... We're talking about a highly homophobic society here, and these men, no matter how much they like the "girls" would be enraged if such things were insinuated about them.
So let's leave all that behind, and say that the book is meant to be a romp, in this respect. It's meant to be tongue-in-cheek, with a hint of wishful thinking. The main character and many of the other characters, especially the girls, are all very stereotypical. Again, let's say this is due to the fact that all of this is a bit like a drag queen show; you go for the over-the-top effect. Some characters, though again a bit too stereotypical, are done well. The nosy neighbor of Sabiha Hanim, for example, is spot on. The main character is well developed and after a while one can start to see the world through his/her eyes. The plot did not bother me as much as it seems to have bothers others. I thought it was plausible (though what happens in the end at the mosque is highly unlikely) and there were enough twists and back stabbings to last for another book.
So why not, say, four stars? Several other people mentioned this and I will try to address it more thoroughly: The writing. I am waiting to get another one of Somer's books to see if the problem might have been the translation. I will read the next one in Turkish and see if the choppy feel that dominates throughout the book is due to translation. Some things in the translation were done well, though. For example, the sen/siz (the familiar you and the formal You) issue is hard to explain, but I thought the translation did a good job with it. But other times, too many times, the narration fails to flow and sometimes even gets confusing due to awkward language.
I don't think translation is the only thing to be blamed here, though. I think the main problem with the narration was that it was told in first person. First person narration is very hard to do well and in many cases it is tiring and flat out annoying to read after a while. The writer could have easily focused on the main character, kept the reader and the main character in the dark just the same, with third person narration, which I think would have helped the flow. I understand that a noir detective story is usually told in first-person, but the limitations of this narrow point of view and the lack of a personal voice (due to the narrator and the main character being the same voice) cause the story to suffer. Basically, it it were written better, either a better translation and/or better narration, it would have been a four. show less

Abandoned about half way through.

The cover is fantastic.

This was a slog and I sometimes had to wonder if I was really reading a mystery novel. Once I got halfway through, saw that it was supposed to be hilarious. I hadn't seen anything that looked like a joke....

And it didn't really feel like she was investigating anything really. There didn't seem to be all that much stakes and I couldn't work out why someone who was being paid to be a white hat hacker wasn't using those skills to investigate this stuff.

Cover's fantastic though.

Glamorous Turkish drag queen (whose day job is as a computer consultant) attempts to unravel the mystery behind a colleague's murder, and unwittingly discovers a web of blackmail and political intrigue. Fortunately our heroine is a master of Thai kick-boxing!

Amusing romp set in the intriguing milieu of Istanbul's transvestite community. There are a few hints of underlying corruption and hypocrisy among the politically and socially powerful in contemporary Turkey, but essentially this is "light reading." I did find it very interesting to read about "same-sex sexuality" in a "modernizing" country that nonetheless retains strong elements of a traditional past. This is the first in Mehmet Murad Somer's "Turkish Delight" series that I've show more read - I'm planning to get at least one more. It would be nice if there was a little more substance in the next one that I read, but it's escapism, so I won't mind too much if there isn't! show less

NOT high art, NOT thriller of this or any other year - but so camp, so colourful, and really funny. I loved this book!