Joseph Kanon paints another nuanced thriller, this time with the ancient city of Istanbul as background, in Istanbul Passage (Atria $26.95) in an evening in our Books at the Biltmore program with fellow author Linda Fairtstein Our event will be in the GOLD ROOM at the fabulous Arizona Biltmore and kicks off a Poisoned Pen Conference continuing on Friday July 13.
For details on our July 13 Conference, click on July 13: 7 authors, 9:30 AM-4:30 PM, buffet lunch
The Kanon/Fairstein event is free, we only ask that all books to be signed be purchased from The Poisoned Pen or at the event. No registration is required
Doors open 6 PM. Program at 7 PM
Cash Bar and Buffet. Free valet parking ($2 tip appreciated)
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Joseph Kanon was born in Pennsylvania and was educated at Harvard and Trinity College, Cambridge (U.K.).
While still an undergraduate at Harvard, he began a career in publishing as a reader for The Atlantic and subsequently held editorial positions at The Saturday Review, Little,Brown, and Coward, McCann. Executive positions followed: President and CEO of E.P. Dutton and Snr. Vice-President and Head of Trade and Reference Publishing at Houghton Mifflin.
In 1995, on a visit to the Southwest, he visited Los Alamos and conceived the ideal for a novel about the Manhattan Project. Los Alamos, published in 1997 was a best-seller, translated into 20 languages, and won the Edgar Award for best first novel. Now a full-time writer, he followed it with The Prodigal Spy (’98), The Good German (’01), Alibi (’05), and Stardust.
In 2005, The Good German was made into a film with George Clooney and Cate Blanchett, directed by Steven Soderbergh.
That same year Kanon won the Hammett Award of the International Association of Crime Writers for Alibi and in 2007 was given The Anne Frank Human Writes Award by The Anne Frank Foundation for his writings on the aftermath of the Holocaust.
Joe lives in New York with his wife, literary agent Robin Straus. They have two sons.
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From the acclaimed, bestselling author of Stardust, The Good German, and Los Alamos—a gripping tale of an American undercover agent in 1945 Istanbul who descends into the murky cat-and-mouse world of compromise and betrayal that will come to define the entire post-war era.
A neutral capital straddling Europe and Asia, Istanbul has spent the war as a magnet for refugees and spies. Even American businessman Leon Bauer has been drawn into this shadow world, doing undercover odd jobs and courier runs for the Allied war effort. Now as the espionage community begins to pack up and an apprehensive city prepares for the grim realities of post-war life, he is given one more assignment, a routine job that goes fatally wrong, plunging him into a tangle of intrigue and moral confusion.
Played out against the bazaars and mosques and faded mansions of this knowing, ancient Ottoman city, Leon’s attempt to save one life leads to a desperate manhunt and a maze of shifting loyalties that threatens his own. How do you do the right thing when there are only bad choices to make? Istanbul Passage is the story of a man swept up in the aftermath of war, an unexpected love affair, and a city as deceptive as the calm surface waters of the Bosphorus that divides it.
Rich with atmosphere and period detail, Joseph Kanon’s latest novel flawlessly blends fact and fiction into a haunting thriller about the dawn of the Cold War, once again proving why Kanon has been hailed as the “heir apparent to Graham Greene” (The Boston Globe).