Pashazade: The First Arabesk (Arabesk Trilogy 1) [Paperback]

Ashraf Bey is not who he seems--a rich Ottoman aristocrat to whom the Iskandryia of a rather different 21st century is more or less his oyster--nor is he simply what he thinks he is--a minor street criminal shipped off to North Africa when he fell foul of his employers. Accused yet again of murders he did not commit, he finds out on the run that he is better than he thinks he is--smarter and more capable and also someone whom people trust and love.

Set in a mildly different alternate world, Pashazade is a thriller with a solidly imagined mystery at its core; it is also a novel about a man finally and belatedly growing up. Ashraf's sense of responsibility for an orphaned girl and for the woman with whom he has refused an arranged marriage are part of what makes him admirable; he has learned the hard way not to treat people as disposable. The details of this alternate near future--an Arab world that remained Turkish after a 1914 war that never quite became important, and into which some slick cybertechnology and genetic gadgetry have slotted without changing anything fundamental--are effectively imagined, but never more important than the people. --Roz Kaveney --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

'Pashazade is the author's finest yet' --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

'... a deeply original work, carrying the seed of Grimwood's vision of an alternate future which I feel sure will blossom' --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

'Grimwood has successfully mingled fantasy with reality to make an unusual, believable and absorbing mystery' --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

'... every bit as good as you would expect from a writer of Grimwood's standing... this really is essential reading' --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

'A future-shock blizzard' --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

El Iskandria is the most famous and cosmopolitan city of Ottoman Egypt in the 21st century. Ashraf Bey travels there to escape an American prison, but ends up the main suspect in a murder, hated by the woman he is supposed to marry and responsible for the welfare of a nine-year-old cousin...In a world where Germany won the First World War, in a world where the Ottoman Empire still dominates the Middle East, in a world where Zeppelins drone overhead...Ashraf Bey has to survive and discover answers to questions about himself and the city he has come to live in. The answers may be factually accurate, but are they true?

Jon Courtenay Grimwood was born in Malta and grew up in the Far East, Britain and Scandinavia. He also writes for magazines and newspapers including the GUARDIAN and SFX.

6th July

The sound of fountains came in stereo. A deep splash from
the courtyard below and a lighter trickle from the next room,
where open arches cut in a wall over-looking the courtyard had
marble balustrades stretched between matching pillars.
It was that kind of house.
Old, historic, near-derelict in places.
‘Ambient temp eighty-one Fahrenheit, humidity sixty-two
per cent . . .’ The American spoke clearly, reading the data
from the face of his watch, then glanced through a smashed
window to what little he could see of the sky outside.
‘Passing cloud, no direct sunlight.’
Dropping clumsily onto one knee, Felix Abrinsky touched
the marble floor with nicotine-stained fingers, confirming to
himself that this statement was correct. The tiles werewarm but
not hot. No latent heat had been stored up from that morning’s
sunshine to radiate back into the afternoon air.
Bizarrely, it took Felix less effort to stand than it had done
to kneel, though he needed to pause to catch his breath all the
same. And the silver-ringed hand that came up to wipe sweat
from his forehead only succeeded in smearing grease across
his scalp and down his thinning ponytail.
Police regulations demanded he wear a face mask, surgical
gloves and – in his case – a sweatband to stop himself from
accidentally polluting biological evidence. But Felix was Chief
of Detectives and so far as he was concerned that meant he
could approach the crime scene how he liked, which was
loose, casual and lateral. Not to mention semi-drunk. All the
virtues that first got him thrown out of the police in Los
Angeles.
Besides, if you wanted to talk about should have been, then
he should have been on holiday. And he would have managed
it, too, if this particular buck hadn’t been bumped up the line
so fast it practically hit the wall parking itself right outside his
office door.
The body in the chair was fresh, still warm to his touch.
Stiffness had set in to the arms – but then, rigor happened fast
when a victim was borderline anorexic. And even without the
woman’s thinness there was North Africa’s heat to add into the
equation. Heat always upped the rate at which rigor gripped a
corpse.
On his arrival Felix had considered obtaining an immediate
body temperature. But habit made him do the crime-scene grabs
first, then work a grid through the victim’s office, tweezering
up clues. And technically, since she was obviously dead, he’d
already broken his own regulations by checking under her jaw
for a carotid pulse.
‘Covering the body prior to site shots.’
Some cities used electronic observers, 360 degree fish-eye
vids, wired for movement and sound. El Iskandryia used the
human kind, when it bothered to use observers at all. The
silksuit Felix had selected stood in the doorway, doing exactly
what he’d been told, which was shut up and stay out of
the way.
From a foil packet Felix extracted a sheet of tissue-thin gauze
designed to protect the woman’s modesty in death, as surely
as a scarf round her head would have hidden her hair on the
streets in life. Except there was no scarf, because the woman
had been stabbed in her own house, at her own desk, in her
own office . . .
‘Starting location shots,’ said the fat man and lifted an old
Speed Graphic. The camera was linked to his even more ancient
LAPD-issue chronograph, which would back up each shot as it
was taken, just as the camera would automatically stamp time,
date and orientation across the bottom edge of each new shot.
15.30:
July 6:
SouthSouthWest.
All the same, Felix dictated a description of what he was
doing, working fast to photograph the little office from every
angle. Only when this was done could he start work on the
body.
‘Exposure five. Al-Mansur madersa. Upstairs. Interior. West
wall and corner of office taken from door. Speed Graphic
Digilux. Fifty-millimetre lens. K400-equivalence.’
The dictation did no more than tell the court what camera
had been used, what the shot showed and what the light was
like: something the camera readouts told them anyway. But he’d
learned his craft back when Speed Graphics still took acetate
and defence attorneys jumped on any conflict of technical
information, no matter how small. And besides, Felix spoke
not really to his camera or watch but to himself.
These days defence attorneys weren’t an issue. If the Chief
of Detectives said someone had committed a crime that was
usually good enough for a judge. The suspect went down.
Unfortunately it had taken Felix a few months to realize this
and there were three cases from his early days in El Iskandryia
which still gave him sleepless nights – four cases, if he was
being unusually hard on himself.
‘Exposure eleven. Al-Mansur madersa. Upstairs. Interior.
Open door to office, taken from broken mashrabiya window
in south wall adjacent to Rue Sherif . . .’
Mashrabiyas were, originally, shaded balconies where water
jugs could be left to cool. But the term had long since come
to signify both the balcony and the ornately carved screen
that hid those in the balcony from the street below. Marble
was commonplace for the screen, as was gilded or painted
wood.
The smashed mashrabiya at the al-Mansur madersa had been
carved two hundred years before from a single slab of alabaster
and now lay in shards on the floor, apparently kicked in from
outside. That the balcony was fifteen feet above a traffic-laden

street only made the break-in more unlikely. Unless one factored
in the Thiergarten who apparently could move unseen,
kill silently and climb walls like flies . . .
Felix sighed. Whatever else Berlin had to buy for its agents
abroad, their deadly reputation came free.

An extract from Pashazade, copyright © Jon Courtenay Grimwood, 2001 --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.