Publisher’s
write-up:
‘Sean Ryan is horrified to learn that
his colleague and friend Alek Zegliwski has been savagely beheaded. His body is
found hidden near the sacred archaeological site of Hagia Sophia in Istanbul.
When
Sean arrives in city to identify the body, he is handed an envelope of
photographs belonging to Alek and soon finds himself in grave danger. Someone
wants him dead – by why?
Aided
by British diplomat Isabel Sharp,
Sean begins to unravel the mystery of the mosaics in the photographs and inches
closer to snaring Alek’s assassin. But evil is at work in Istanbul and when a
lethal virus is unleashed upon the city, panic spreads fast across Europe. Time
is running out for Sean and Isabel. They must catch the killer before it’s too
late…’
The Istanbul Puzzle is the first novel in
Laurence O’Bryan’s Puzzle series featuring Sean Ryan, a widower working at The
Institute of Applied Research, Oxford.
It
begins with the murder of Alek Zegliwski, an employee at the Institute of
Applied Research, Oxford. The murder attracted a lot of attention considering
how he was beheaded in Hagia Sophia. This brings his closest acquaintance into
the scene, Sean Ryan, the director of the institute and by entering the scene;
he ends up risking his own life as Alek’s assailants are willing to do anything
to let the murder remain a mystery. However, this doesn’t worry Sean in anyway
whatsoever, and is equally determined to unravel the mystery behind his
colleague’s death and is helped by British diplomat in the process. The story
is narrated by Sean in first person (his parts).
A one liner I’d say for this book is that
the write-up on the back-cover flatters
to deceive. While it starts very well, with a barbaric beheading followed
by Sean Ryan urgently heading to Istanbul to investigate the scene and ends up
getting attacked on the same day with Isabel coming to his rescue. However,
with that, everything came to an end. The author was too much in awe of Hagia
Sophia, the friendly nature of the Turkish public and Hagia Sophia and ends up
describing every brick of the city with such details that he gets lost in
proceeding with the plot. In fact, the sub-plot on the planning of the bio-war
turned out to be much more interesting and considering the end, I’m in a
dilemma as to decide which is the plot – Alek’s murder or the sub-plot
describer here but owing to the number of pages occupied by the former, I’d advisedly
use that description for the latter. It gets nowhere till Sean and Isabel find
an ancient manuscript beneath Hagia Sophia, giving a glimmer of hope to the
reader that things are going to get interesting from thereon but then, it flattered to deceive too, like the
overall write-up and in fact, the find had no real impact in the story, in the
end.
However, some praise worthy aspects of the
novel are is the description of Istanbul as aforementioned. Upon reading this,
your urge to visit the city where the cultures of East and West merge would
just be on the rise considering the picturesque descriptions of the various
monuments such as Hagia Sophia, Topkapi Palace and Hagia Eirene (though I don’t
know why the Blue Mosque was completely ignored) and the Bosphorous. In fact, I’d
rate it as a good travelogue with a story in the background. The way in which
the author brought out the rising trust between Sean and Isabel was also good –
rather than putting up with another love at first sight, Isabel falls only out
of growing respect for Sean and also made a good combination together
considering Sean’s tenacious and Isabel’s pragmatic approach.
However, while I found the coordination
between Sean and Isabel to be praise worthy, however, I felt that as a reader,
I couldn’t involve myself with any of the characters individually and in fact,
Sean was even quite ignorant (well, how could someone be totally in the dark
about a mass demonstration that was going to take place in his city of
residence, especially with it being reported in the news for so many days).
Moreover, the number of loose ends were a way too many beyond the tolerable
limit for a thriller – just to name a few; the search at Sean’s house in Fulham
– who did it and why was it done? Ultimately, it had no impact on the plot,
either. The visit to Iraq is quite similar where they find no significant lead
and the only result of it was the death of the Greek Orthodox priest (not to
mention, there were several other similar pointless deaths – such as… well,
nearly every acquaintance of Sean in Turkey). And to top it all, this list isn’t
even exhaustive. Perhaps, the only justification for the loose ends is that
there is a sequel but I guess following this, I’m hardly motivated to read it,
following this novel.
While I had been reading that this work
could be compared to that of Dan Brown’s, it inevitably led to a huge
disappointment as it wasn’t even half as good as The Da Vinci Code with the
only similarity being the occurrence of a murder in the prologue and historic
references to happenings during an ancient era. I had very high hopes on the
author’s work myself considering his tweets and the contents he shared in his
blog that I was too keen to only read a story of his; only to be deceived, in
the end. To my fellow readers – don’t read this expecting a The Da Vinci Code style thriller – have your
expectations really low.
I had been looking for this novel for a
really long time and considering the scarce availability of it in my country of
residence, I bought it from a neighbouring country and considering my
expectations, the effort I took in hunting for this novel, and it was a huge
disappointment. I hope something better in the sequel, in case I find the
sudden motivation to read it.
I’d be generous enough to award The
Istanbul Puzzle a 4/10 (only for the description of Istanbul).
Rating
– 4/10
Have
a nice day,
Andy
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