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Nonfiction Not Constantinople ISTANBUL: A Tale of Three Cities By Bettany Hughes 800 pp. Da Capo Reviewed by: David E. Hoekenga, M. D. Riding across modern Istanbul’s crowded streets in a bus, I was struck by the drifts of purple hyacinths in the medians, tall pink tulips and yellow daffodils along the curbs. “Where did these colorful bulb flowers originate?” Our guide asked in flawless English. “Holland” or the “Netherlands,” several guests piped up brightly. “No,” Ruslan answered with pride after a pause. “They all came from the mountains of Turkey.” As we drove around the modern city of Istanbul, we saw part of the three cities—Byzantium, Constantinople (you know the song as well as I do-it’s Istanbul not Constantinople), and of course Istanbul—from the Hagia Sophia to the Blue Mosque to the Topkapi Palace to the Ortakoy Mosque. You travel by motor to understand the layout of much of this town of sixteen million people along the Bosporus, a narrow north south channel of water connec...

Fiction Where everybody knows your business A RECKONING IN THE BACK COUNTRY: A Samuel Craddock Mystery By Terry Shames 272 pp. Seventh Street Books Reviewed by Eric Petersen Terry Shames is back with the seventh entry in her Samuel Craddock mystery series. Grizzled lawman Samuel Craddock comes out of retirement to once again serve as chief of police for Jarrett Creek, the small, sleepy South Texas border town where he lives. The town went broke a while back and can’t afford to hire a new police chief, and he doesn’t need the money. This new entry in the folksy mystery series opens with Craddock’s neighbor and friend Loretta Singletary stopping by one morning with her famous cinnamon buns. When she asks what’s been keeping him so busy lately, he tells her that some people’s dogs have mysteriously gone missing. Loretta mentions that someone she knows has also gone missing, one Dr. Lewis Wilkins. Wilkins and his wife are “lake people” – out-of-towners who own a second home by the lake. Wh...

Fiction Murder by the books WRITTEN IN BLOOD By Layton Green 335 pp. Seventh Street Books Reviewed by Eric Petersen Mystery writer Layton Green is back with a new novel whose intriguing plot is sure to please. Detective Joe “Preach” Everson is not your ordinary cop. A former teenage hellraiser turned preacher turned prison chaplain turned police officer, he’s come back to his hometown of Creekville, North Carolina after working as a homicide detective in Atlanta. Creekville is a small, quaint little town that’s one of the few liberal bastions in a fiercely conservative state, a town where radical progressive liberals peacefully co-exist with their old school Southern conservative neighbors. Where hipsters and good ol’ boys go about their business and never seem to get on each other’s nerves. But as Preach Everson is about to discover, there’s a chilling dark side to the quiet, respectable town he calls home. The novel opens with the detective at the scene of a bizarre and brutal murder...

Nonfiction Monsters and partisans PRIMO LEVI’S RESISTANCE: Rebels and Collaborators in Occupied Italy By Sergio Luzzatto 284 pp. Metropolitan Books, Henry Holt and Company Reviewed by David E. Hoekenga, M.D. Primo Levi was a noted writer, chemist and Auschwitz survivor. In the summer of 1943, after a bloody campaign in Russia and defeat at El Alamein, Mussolini was suddenly ousted. A civil war broke out with resistance toward the Germany Army and the current Italian government. Speaking of Levi, the author said, “This was his brief and unfortunate season as a partisan, or something like a partisan. Three months in the mountains of the Valle d’Aosta in northwest Italy as a twenty-four-year-old, linked to a little band that had come together at the Col de Joux—a mountain pass high above the town of Saint Vincent—in the autumn of 1943.” It is this brief period that is the subject of this book. Many of the exploits in this book take place, as mentioned above, in the mountainous region betw...