One question that kept popping up in Baltimore: when does The Bellini Card come out in the US?

Simple: next March. It’s got a gorgeous cover – I just saw it last week in NYC – and it is spotlessly proofed, too. The catalogue says:

INSPECTOR YASHIM TRAVELS TO VENICE IN THE LATEST INSTALLMENT OF EDGAR AWARD–WINNING AUTHOR JASON GOODWIN’S CAPTIVATING SERIES

Istanbul, 1840: the new sultan, Abdulmecid, has heard a rumor

that Bellini’s vanished masterpiece—a portrait of Mehmed the

Conqueror—may have resurfaced in Venice. Yashim, our eunuch

detective, is promptly sent to investigate, but—aware that the

sultan’s advisers are against any extravagant repurchase of the

painting—decides to deploy his disempowered Polish ambassa-

dor friend, Palewski, to visit Venice in his stead. Palewski arrives

in disguise in down-at-the-heel Venice, where a killer is at large,

as dealers, faded aristocrats, and other unknown factions seek to

uncover the whereabouts of the missing Bellini.

But is it the Bellini itself that endangers all, or something asso-

ciated with its original loss? And how is it that all of the killer’s

victims are somehow tied to the alluring Contessa d’Aspi d’Istria?

Will the Austrians unmask Palewski, or will the killer find him first?

Only Yashim can uncover the truth to the manifold mysteries.

Jason Goodwin’s first Yashim mystery, The Janissary Tree, brought

home the Edgar Award for Best Novel. His second, The Snake Stone,

more than lived up to expectations. In The New York Times Book

Review, Marilyn Stasio hailed it as “a magic carpet ride to the most

exotic place on earth.” Now, in The Bellini Card, Jason Goodwin

takes us back into his “intelligent, gorgeous and evocative” (In-

dependent on Sunday) world, as dazzling as a hall of mirrors and

utterly compelling. 

 

In the meantime, there’s the paperback of The Snake Stone, just out from Picador.