Happy Birthday Turk     by Jakob Arjouni, Translated by A Hollo Original title: Happy Birthday Türke Original language: German Published by No Exit Press Format: Paperback, 191 pages ISBN: 1874061378 List Price: $9.95, £4.99 Buy online from Amazon.co.uk for £4.99 Published by No Exit Pub. Date: 1994 Format: Paperback, 191 pages List Price: £8.99 Not available for ordering

Much of the detective story’s appeal depends on milieu, like the Oxford of British TV’s Inspector Morse and the detective figure is also very often an outsider of some sort, like Sherlock Holmes, Sam Spade or Hercule Poirot in their different ways. Arjouni’s detective in this first novel (filmed in Germany, and with a sequel More Beer also translated) is a specific kind of outsider in a specifically German milieu. Kemal Kayankaya, a private detective working in Frankfurt, is of Turkish origin but was adopted and brought up by Germans in Germany and is quite unable to speak Turkish. Turks, of course, form a large part of the migrant-worker population in Germany, and there have been racial attacks and problems of all kinds. A German-speaking Turk as a detective outside the police force is, therefore, a multiple outsider. Working in a large industrial city, he is asked to investigate a murder in the Turkish community simply because he has a Turkish name, and because the police are not terribly interested in a dead Turk. So there is tension not only in the action, but also in the fact of his origins (and looks) and the way he is treated by the police and by the Germans he encounters. Kayankaya faces racial abuse, regular mockery and beatings-up on a regular basis as he pursues his investigation.

These indications of very sensitive social issues give an extra dimension to the detective-story format, although much of the plot-line conforms to the standard underworld novel, with drug addiction and smuggling, ladies of dubious virtue, blackmail, corrupt policemen and quite a lot of violence. The format is not the genteel English detective story but more Raymond Chandler, whose influence is unmistakable in the style, though the use of the local Frankfurt dialect (and a few other features) get unfortunately lost in translation. The story moves along rapidly, and with much incidental humour in the dry self-reflection of this Turkish-origin Philip Marlowe in the land of economic miracles and Gastarbeiter (‘Guestworker’ — name for foreign workers in postwar W. Germany).

‘My investigations had gotten off to a flying start. I wiped the last drops of puke out of my ears and made myself a Scotch and soda... At some time, who knows when, a prostitute had yelled for Ahmed Hamul. That was what I had found out.... I wondered how much physical abuse I would have to endure in exchange for some decent information, and whether I could charge visits to brothels on my expense sheet. Slowly my second Scotch and soda anaesthetised my bruised stomach. If I really had to locate that prostitute to find out a little more about Ahmed Hamul, my search could turn out to be interminable.’