Jason Goodwin, The Snake Stone (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007)
I really enjoyed reading the first book in Jason Goodwin's Investigator Yashim series, The Janissary Tree. We heard some months ago that a sequel was in the works and pestered FSG for an advance reader's copy. Alas, that never materialized. Finally, we saw the book on the new table at Borders. We reminded the FSG publicist that we really, really wanted to review the book, and eventually got him to send us a copy!
Perhaps the combination of my fondness for The Janissary Tree and my eager anticipation for The Snake Stone led me to have unrealistic expectations. I only know that I found the latter mildly disappointing. I don't think it lived up to the promise of its predecessor. I'll tell you why in this review.
But first, let me give you just a bit of background: this is the second installment of a murder mystery series set in Istanbul during the first half of the nineteenth century, when the Ottoman Empire was still in its heyday. The Janissary Tree takes place in 1839, about a decade after the so-called Auspicious Event usurped the Janissaries from their powerful position in the Ottoman hierarchy. Yashim Togalu, the primary character, is by no means an official "investigator" as the series subtitle would suggest. Rather, he is a lala (which roughly translates as guardian), a free-lancer in a society obsessed with clearly defined roles and statuses. Yashim lives alone, and has only a few friends. Nonetheless, he enjoys the protection of the Sultan (Mahmut II, remembered for introducing legal and military reforms that laid the foundation for the modern Turkish state) and the friendship of the Sultan's elderly French mother. Yashim also happens to be a eunuch, missing some, but by no means all, of his crown jewels. This status gives him the ability to visit the Sultan's mother in her apartments in the harem, which he does on occasion to borrow French novels from her collection -- they both enjoy Balzac, who would have been in vogue at this time.
While no dates are explicitly mentioned in The Snake Stone, I was able to ascertain that it also takes place in 1839, because Mahmut II died of tuberculosis on July 1 of that year. Several chapters of this book focus on the Sultan as he lays dying in his immense palace at Besiktas, a short distance up the Bosphorus from the central city. Unfortunately, these chapters have almost nothing to do with the rest of the story, other than to establish for the reader the imminent departure of Yashim's protector.
And in this novel, Yashim certainly needs protection -- he becomes the prime suspect in the murder of an erstwhile French archaeologist, Maximilien Lefevre, whom he meets by chance while dining one evening with his old friend, the Polish ambassador Stanislaw Palewski. Although Yashim takes an instant disliking to Lefevre (correctly intuiting that he is a flimflam man who steals and sells ancient relics), Lefevre grabs onto Yashim as though he were a life preserver, hiding out in his apartment and enlisting Yashim's aid in finding a berth on a steamer heading back to Europe on very short notice. While Yashim tries to gather the evidence he needs to prove to the French authorities that he did not kill M. Lefevre, a boatman tries to kill him, strangers trash his apartment, and Lefevre's succulent wife Amelie pays him an unexpected visit, providing him with this book's opportunity to demonstrate that even a eunuch can satisfy a woman.
So what, you may ask, is the snake stone? You know, that's not as easy to answer as it should be. Near as I can tell, it's a reference to the so-called Serpent Column, part of a monument erected by the Byzantine emperor Constantine, crowned with three snakes' heads, none of which are still on the column at the time this novel takes place. In fact, two of them are locked in an armoire in the Polish Embassy for reasons never explained. They may be the treasure that Lefevre is after when he arrives in Istanbul, but that's not clear. Certainly there are people who don't want Lefevre's mission to be successful.
Besides the faithful and eccentric Palewski and the Sultan's mother, a few other characters from The Janissary Tree make cameo appearances in The Snake Stone. These include the aging kocek dancer Preen, now embarked on opening a theatre, Palewski's enigmatic housekeeper Marta, and Murad Eslek, whom Yashim met when fire ravaged his neighborhood and who later saved his life.
I warn you, the plot of The Snake Stone is about as easy to navigate as the underground tunnels that form the ingenious water supply system for Istanbul. (Even Yashim, perfectly capable of finding his way around the city above, gets lost in these!) Some of its digressions eventually connect back to the main story line; others are at best false leads, at worst literal dead ends. In addition to the Sultan on his death bed, there's George the Greek street vendor, who falls victim to a mugging in the book's opening chapter. Yashim buys produce from him, and spends time visiting him as he recovers from his injuries. Then there's Goulandris the bookseller, the first murder victim. Yashim buys cookbooks from him. Then there's Xani, the Albanian waterman, whose family lives in Palweski's coach house. Yashim is called upon to look for Xani when he goes missing, and learns more than he ever wanted to about the tunnels and the guild that tends the city's water supply infrastructure. And of course there's the Greek Mavrogordato family, bankers and moneylenders. Madame Mavrogordato enlists Yashim's aid with a problem, then hastily and mysteriously withdraws her request. Yashim keeps running into her son, Alexander, around town.
Then there are the interminable, lovingly detailed cooking scenes. I know I found them charming in The Janissary Tree. And Goodwin clearly revels in them, giving homage in his acknowledgements to Berrin Torolson, who writes feature articles about Ottoman cookery in Cornucopia magazine. But enough is enough! In The Snake Stone, these scenes simply present further obstacles to the already impeded flow of the story.
I am not ready to give up on a murder mystery series set in nineteenth-century Istanbul -- the period and setting are just too appealing to me. But I hope that Jason Goodwin's next foray into this universe is more successful than this one!
