It all began with a favour. Kayankaya and Slibulsky had wanted to help out Romario, the owner of a small Brazilian restaurant, when he is threatened by extortionists. Then suddenly there were two bodies on the floor of Romario's restaurant, their faces caked in white powder. Kayankaya is troubled by these deaths and decides to find out who the men are, until he himself is pursued by a mafia organisation about whom nothing appears to be known. Gradually it becomes clear to Kayankaya that he is facing the most brutal and dangerous group of gangsters to have run Frankfurt's station quarter. And then a new assignment comes in: he is to find a woman he has seen in a video film, and who he is convinced was looking at him from the screen. Kismet is a brilliant novel about organised crime, the fallout from the Balkan wars, and the madness of nationalism from one of Europe's finest crime writers.

Winner of the German Crime Fiction Prize A Kemal Kayankaya Mystery A distressed artist comes to Kayankaya for help. His Thai girlfriend has been kidnapped. Kayankaya's raised eyebrow brings protestations of love. He confronts obstructive racist officials, corrupt cops and some of Germany's most depraved and dangerous criminals in his trawl through the immigration offices and brothels of Frankfurt where it seems young women fugitives and asylum seekers are disappearing into the Frankfurt night.

Four members of a radical ecological group are accused of the murder of the director of a chemical plant near Frankfurt. While admitting to material damage of the plant they deny any involvement with the murder. According to witnesses, five people participated in the sabotage but where is the fifth man? The defendant's lawyer hires Kemal Kayankaya to find him. Born in Turkey but raised in Germany, Kayankaya encounters many obstacles in his search to unravel the complex riddle at the heart of this mystery, not only because he is a Turk but also because his acidic wit spares no one, not even the political and judicial powers who seem will stop at nothing to try and silence him...

Provoked by the events of 9/11 and the US reaction, Jakob Arjouni's clever and satiric novel exposes the workings of mass hysteria. 2064 - Securely fenced off from the rest of the world, life in Euroasia, except for a handful of suicide bombings and border disputes, is constantly improving. On the other side of the fence, countries are being exploited and wracked by regression, dictatorship, and religious fanaticism. People live in poverty and misery. Max Schwartzwald is the owner of Chez Max, a smart Parisian restaurant, but he is also an Ashcroft agent, a member of a secret government organisation whose mission is to promptly identify and weed out anything that may threaten the political status quo. Schwartzwald's biggest problem is his Ashcroft partner, Chen Wu, a self-righteous loudmouth, who leaves no taboo unbroken, attacks every human weakness and takes liberties at will - all because of the spectacular successes he has achieved within the organisation. But is Chen a double agent who is bringing illegal immigrants into the Euroasian world and is this the opportunity for Max to get rid of his partner once and for all?

When a Turkish labourer is stabbed to death in Frankfurt's red light district the local police see no reason to work overtime. Kemal Kayankaya, however has a different attitude. He is 26, born in Turkey, raised in Germany and now working as a Private Investigator. He has a German passport but has first hand experience of resentment against foreigners and now Hamul's wife, Ilter, has hired Kayankaya to find out who murdered her husband. In the 3 days it takes him to wrap up the case, he has time to identify Ilter's sister as a heroin addict, track down Ahmed's girlfriend [a prostitute], link his father-in-law's fatal accident three years earlier to an ingenious police cover-up, and still survive beatings, gas attacks and a close encounter with a Fiat.

Fifth mystery featuring Kemal Kayankaya Valerie de Chavannes, a financier's daughter, summons private investigator Kemal Kayankaya to her villa in Frankfurt's diplomatic quarter and commissions him to find her missing sixteen-year-old daughter Marieke. She is alleged to be with an older man who is posing as an artist. To Kayankaya, it seems like a simple case: an upper class girl with a thirst for adventure. Then another case turns up: The Maier Publishing House believes it needs to protect author Malik Rashid from attacks by religious fanatics at the Frankfurt Book Fair. Rashid has written a novel about, amongst other things, attitudes towards homosexuality in an Arabic country. Kayankaya is hired to be Rashid's bodyguard for three days. The two cases seem to be straightforward, but together they lead to murder, rape and abduction, and even Kayankaya comes under suspicion of being a contract killer for hire.