CSI: Istanbul

Boston University anthropology professor Jenny White trades academic papers for political plots in her first novel, about murder in the dying Ottoman Empire. When an English governess drowns while wearing a pendant inscribed with the seal of the palace, a young magistrate ties her death to an almost identical one eight years before. The investigation tangles him up in a knot of secret affairs, lost loves, and political mutiny, connecting the royal family, the British ambassador, and a Muslim woman. White's complicated story gets off to a slow start, but her evocative prose and plot twists pull the reader to the satisfying ending.