January 1888. Vera Arti carries The Communist Manifesto in Armenian through Istanbul's streets, unaware of the men following her. When the police discover a shipload of guns and the Imperial Ottoman Bank is blown up, suspicion falls on a socialist commune Arti's friends organized in the eastern mountains. Special Prosecutor Kamil Pasha is called in to investigate. He soon encounters his most ruthless adversary to date: Vahid, head of a special branch of the secret police, who has convinced the sultan that the commune is leading a secessionist movement and should be destroyed'along with surrounding villages. Kamil must stop the massacre, but he finds himself on the wrong side of the law, framed for murder and accused of treason, his family and the woman he loves threatened.
Exploring the dark obsessions of the most powerful and dangerous men of the dying Ottoman Empire, The Winter Thief also reflects the mad idealism of those turbulent times.
'White's gripping third thriller to feature Turkish detective Kamil Pasha will appeal to fans of Laura Joh Rowland's Japanese historical series'The atmospherics and period detail are first-rate.''Publishers Weekly
The Ottoman Empire is plagued by thefts of antiquities from mosques and churches. Within days, the lost objects appear for sale in Europe. Among them is a reliquary presumed lost for 400 years and around which an elaborate, mysterious sect has grown.In Istanbul, magistrate Kamil Pasha is under pressure to break the smuggling ring amid rising tensions between Christians and Muslims. He confronts a mysterious adversary who will stop at nothing to get the reliquary first. With the Balkans aflame and Kamil's personal life in upheaval, the search into the old neighborhoods where Istanbul's crime rings reside may cost Kamil not only his position but also his life.
The Abyssinian Proof re-creates the gritty underworld of a dying empire.
"Kamil-smart, brave, and compassionate-proves an appealing sleuth....White, a professor of anthropology, clearly knows her period and place...."-Publishers Weekly
The Sultan's Seal is a story of faith and desire, set within a gripping tale of murder in nineteenth-century Istanbul. When two young Englishwomen are found dead, wearing the symbol of the deposed sultan, Kamil Pasha, a magistrate in the new secular courts, sets out to find the killer. But his dispassionate belief in science and modernity is shaken by betrayal and widening danger. Were these political murders, or crimes of personal passion? Rich in sensuous detail, this novel brilliantly captures the political and social upheavals of the waning Ottoman Empire.