More Somer breeze

A few outtakes from this week's interview with Mehmet Murat Somer touched on setting, exotic and otherwise, a matter of occasional interest here at Detectives Beyond Borders.

"My books are not tourist guidebooks," Somer declared. Some crime novels, he said, express their sense of place through description, but "Istanbul is a personality in my books. It reflects ideas, feelings." To that end, he said he once turned down a request to give a visitor a tour of his novels' Istanbul and took the visitor for coffee instead. "What am I going to do, take them to transvestite nightclubs?"

At the same time, Somer appreciates the eye that a tourist or traveller can bring. "An observing eye," he said. "Even what we observe going for one day is valuable." This reminds me of Michael Genelin's remark at Bouchercon this year that a visitor may sometimes pick up details that a resident would miss because they are so commonplace.

With Somer's remark about Istanbul in mind, how can an author create a sense of place other than by taking readers sightseeing?

© Peter Rozovsky 2009

An interview with Mehmet Murat Somer

Imagine a crime series written by a management consultant trained as an engineer. Odds are you'll conjure up something quite different from Mehmet Murat Somer's Turkish Delight mysteries (published as the Hop-Çiki-Yaya series in the United Kingdom).

Somer's hero manages a transvestite club in Istanbul by night and works as a computer security consultant by day. He (or she) is also an expert in aikido and Thai kick-boxing. Somer, both a canny businessman and angry over media and entertainment depictions of transgendered people, says: "A transvestite detective was a marketing niche." He also acknowledges frustration with depictions of transvestites as freaks or jokes. And, he says, "I always have my criminals from the `white' society ... in The Kiss Murders right-wing nationalists, in The Gigolo Murder the finance world." ("Hop-Çiki-Yaya," the series' name in the U.K., originated as a cheerleaders' cry and came to be a sly or snide term for gay men, Somer says.)

Penguin has just issued The Kiss Murder, the first of the series to be published in the United States, and plans to bring out The Gigolo Murder in October. The Prophet Murders had appeared earlier in the United Kingdom. Somer has published six novels in the series in Turkish along with an additional book featuring some of the series' minor characters. In a chat with Detectives Beyond Borders, Mehmet Murat Somer talks about his work and its background and reception. He also offers a brief lesson in Turkish etiquette.

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Detectives Beyond Borders: Mehmet effendi ...

Mehmet Murat Somer: Well, thank you, but that "effendi" addressing sounds a bit out of fashion, left in the 1920's. Now only janitors are called "effendi." [Ed. note: Here, as elsewhere in this interview, the reader must imagine the smiley icons Somer included in his reply.]

DBB: Jason Goodwin's novel The Snake Stone, also set in Istanbul, includes some köçek girls as minor characters, yet his book is set in the Istanbul of 1838. Are your characters part of that same tradition? If so, how far back does the tradition go in Turkey? What role do transvestites occupy in Turkish culture?

MMS: A lot!!! We have a tradition of men or boys dressing like females and entertaining other men, either dancing (çengi, köçek), or drink servers (saki). And still, the star status in the music industry is occupied by a transsexual, Ms. Bülent Ersoy.

DBB: Your first novel to be translated into English was published with the title The Prophet Murders. Is this a translation of the Turkish title? What is the reaction among Muslims to a title such as that?

MMS: Yes, the title is translated correctly. Although there were some fears before publication, nothing happened. They just raved about the book, possibly because my Turkish publisher was a prestigious one like Penguin here. It acted like a protective shield.

DBB: You set your books in one of the most crowded and most historically cosmopolitan cities in the world, yet they share characteristics with traditional English village mysteries: You gather a group of characters in a small setting (the nightclub), and your narrator/protagonist loves to comment on their quirks. Have village mysteries by authors such as Agatha Christie influenced your work? What crime fiction have you read and enjoyed? Which crime writers, if any, do you feel produce work similar in spirit to yours?

MMS: Naturally I adore the queen of crime fiction, Dame Agatha. My Gigolo Murder is a kind of ode to her style. My all-time favorite is Patricia Highsmith. Also my compatriot Perihan Magden's Escape.

DBB: Why did you choose crime fiction as a vehicle for writing about these characters and their world?

MMS: I like crime fiction. I consider myself a good reader. And I have the idea that crime fiction should and could be also fun, joyful.

DBB: The Prophet Murders and The Kiss Murder are full of explicit, matter-of-fact and often very funny discussions of sex. What reaction has this caused?

MMS: Some say there is not enough sex in them. I was even accused of creating very clean, white, puritanical transvestites. So, the opinion varies. Follow the rest of series; more will come.

DBB: In The Prophet Murders, especially, your protagonist has some harsh things to say about her co-workers' lack of seriousness or intelligence. How do transgender/transvestite/gay readers react to this? Is there ever any pressure to show "solidarity," to say only good things about the girls? Or does that pressure come only from politically correct liberal white males like me?

MMS: The books, themselves are considered as solidarity pieces. And it is a known fact that the transvestites working in Istanbul night life are not the front-runners of intellectuals.

DBB: You never give your protagonist a name, at least not in the two books published so far in English. Why not?

MMS: One of the small games I play by myself. With each and every book of the series, I reveal another part of life of my protagonist.

DBB: Val McDermid called The Kiss Murder "A cappuccino of a book – the froth and fizz on top disguises the dark and bitter brew beneath." I'd like you to talk about that comment, to tell me what you think she means and whether you agree with her.

MMS: I love that!!! And I believe it defines what I meant. Excellent!

DBB: How have the Turkish public and Turkish critics received your novels? Into what other languages has your work been translated?

MMS: I got all the good critics. Or at least my agent didn’t show me the bad ones. The Kiss Murder has been published in French, Spanish, German (2009), Polish, Greek (2009), Portuguese (Brazil).

Thanks indeed. Enjoy life ... Better with my books.

(Read Euro Crime's May 2008 interview with Mehmet Murat Somer here.)

© Peter Rozovsky 2009

Class distinctions

A nice comment on romance and love from Mehmet Murat Somer's The Kiss Murder:

"My man intervened. `Calm down, lady ... '

"Ay! I don't think much of men who use the term `lady,' either. It reeks of the lower classes. The sort who imagine romance can only end in marriage."

And yes, that cover illustration is meant to evoke Audrey Hepburn.

© Peter Rozovsky 2009

The Prophet Murders — Community news

A recent commenter on this blog wrote favorably of the tendency in English village mysteries for characters to gather in the local pub and talk things out. Mehmet Murat Somer's The Prophet Murders manages a similar feeling of intimacy, though the center of its universe is a transvestite nightclub in a city of 10 million people.

Somer articulates the feeling of community from the novel's first page, where the protagonist, who manages the club, has just read of a transvestite's death in a fire. "Bad news about our girls always gets me down," he reflects (italics mine).

The protagonist, never named in the book, is not just the manager of the club, he also dresses the part. He is gay and, as narrator and character, he is forthright about his sexual pleasures and practices. By day, he dresses in men's clothing and is an expert in computer security. Nothing like this is likely to turn up in an Agatha Christie novel. Still, the comparison is valid, emphasized by the protagonist's chatty observations about music, television, diets and food and the amusingly chilling gimmickry of the plot (a series of transvestites, each with the given name of a prophet in Islam, turn up dead), and made explicit by references to Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple.

Somer makes intelligent, amusing and creative use of at least one additional amateur-sleuth convention: that of the expert who provides skills that the amateur hero lacks. This protagonist has several such helpers, the most intriguing of whom we meet first in a chat room, where he posts inflammatory messages using the handle jihad2000. The name expresses one facet of the character. The other facets may be far more surprising.

© Peter Rozovsky 2008

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Mehmet Murat Somer
Turkish crime fiction

Coda: A note on musical references in crime stories

Enthusiastic response to last week's post about Crime songs has had me thinking about music, crime fiction and music in crime fiction.

One of my complaints about the last is that a given song or musician, usually of the rock and roll variety, too often serves as nothing more than a brand name or a label. The song or the performers are simply too popular to serve as a meaningful indicator of a character's uniqueness.

Håkan Nesser uses music in his recently published Mind's Eye, where he has his protagonist, Van Veeteren, slip into his car and put on some Francisco Tárrega. The reference to the great classical guitarist is, like many musical references in crime novels, a label. Nesser does not make music an important part of Van Veeteren's makeup. But at least it's a distinctive label. Not many fictional detectives favor classical guitar.

The music references that really caught my eye recently, though, were in Mehmet Murat Somer's The Prophet Murders. In the scene in question, the manager of a transvestite nightclub insists that the club's record spinner account for his choice of music:

"`What's this music you're playing?' I demanded.

"`Adiemus. New Age. It's a new group. Great, isn't it?'

"To add insult to injury, he was poking fun at me. New Age is one of the forms of music I simply don't comprehend. Paul Mauriat, Franck Pourcel, Francis Lai and even Fausto Papetti have been playing this kind of music for years. The only difference is that they perform with an orchestra, not synthesizers and the piping of a flute. Nowadays, intellectuals have elevated this sort of music into an art form. Why the double standard? What have the others been doing wrong all these years? A succession of critics has slammed them. All right, I don't think much of their work either, but I don't see the difference, do you?"

Now, that's a good string of musical references. The scene is funny. It tells us something about the protagonist's personality. It packs an amusing, self-satirical punch line. The mention of instruments may help you imagine the music. If you know the performers, you may smile (or wince) to memories of soaring, sappy, minor-key string passages. Somer's passage is a hell of a lot more than just a label, in other words. Most important, the scene could work just as well for a reader who has never heard of the performers in question.

And now readers, what are your favorite musical references in crime novels or stories? What makes the references work?

© Peter Rozovsky 2008

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Mehmet Murat Somer
Turkish crime fiction

What your favorite glamorously dressed detective is wearing

I've written from time to time about amateur detectives, so I took notice when Euro Crime published an interview with the creator of an especially exotic example: a glamorous transvestite/corporate consultant/computer whizz/underground-club owner, and in Istanbul, no less.

Author Mehmet Murat Somer tells Euro Crime about his unusual protagonist and, as a bonus, offers a brief guide to crime fiction by Turkish writers and by foreign writers who set their books in Turkey.

And, in another hat tip to Euro Crime, here's something that sounds like fun.

© Peter Rozovsky 2008

Technorati tags:
Mehmet Murat Somer
Turkish crime fiction