As an aside, I am always daunted by books with lists of characters. It's as if the author is warning the reader, "I have included so many people you won't be able to keep up." One character I could not wrap my empathy around was Captain Robert Markham. He's not very lovable as the main protagonist. He doesn't connect with his ten year old son except to see him as a rival for his wife's affections. It's as if he doesn't know what to do with his boy, Henry. This fact is not lost on the kid. Meanwhile, Robert treats his wife as an ornamental yet extremely fragile vase he parades out and places front and center during social occasions. His saves his sexual appetite for Henry's governess. He all but rapes this poor girl because he has told her his truth; his Armenian fiance was raped and murdered twelve years earlier at their engagement party. What happens when all these secrets are revealed and Markham's world starts to unravel? It's an interesting dilemma. ( )

This a rather puzzling novel with two aspects. First it is the story of the last days of the Ottoman empire. The second is the story of an English military attache in Constantinople named Robert Markham. He becomes engaged to an Armenian woman and at his engagement part watches as all the Armenians at the party are killed. His fiance is raped. He escapes being killed by saying that he is English. The novel takes place 12 years after this event. He is married with a son. His guilt from escaping the slaughter 12 years earlier leads to his raping his son's governess, bullying a young English woman reporter, and pushing a colleague into suicide. The most successful part of the novel is the examination of the workings of the mind of this utterly aloof man, how and why he behaves abominable. The end of the novel takes place as Ottoman regime collapses. This part is just not believable and does not add anything at all to the novel. ( )

Graham Greeneland sans Catholicism plus history. The exotic setting (E Said would not be pleased); the hint of a whodunnit; the spies: the morally mixed-up central character; the sexual tribulations; the guilt. Some good passages, both description and action, but in the end the hero doesnt quite add up: why is he so wounded by this past incident? is he a nasty piece of work or not? His search feels like a wild goose chase from the start; the expiatory act at the end has an odd feel to it: apart from the pain we don't know if he finds expiation or not. The coda - his "retirement" and a refocus on the son - seems anticlimactic. That said, the characters (stiff blinkered expat Brits and multiple variations on the wily Oriental gentleman are credible, if verging on stereotype. The research and recreation of another world are excellently done, an insight into the last days of Ottoman Empire, including a good smattering of Turkish phrases. A small misfit is the "nautch" girls, a Hindi term not Turkish. ( )