The Istanbul Gambit

Severely traumatised, Dr. Hafez Yilmaz has left war-torn Eritrea to work at a charity-run clinic for refugees in Sicily. He is just about holding his demons at bay when a child is brought in, her life hanging by a thread. She has been trafficked and left to die in a ditch.

Convinced that the local police are not doing enough to trace the traffickers, Hafez sets out to investigate. His life in grave danger, he ends up hiding in Scotland where he befriends a local girl, Yasmin Cilic, and encounters her brother, Orhan, a sinister figure with links to organised crime.

At Orhan’s nightclub, Hafez overhears a conversation about children being trafficked into Scotland, and once again decides to investigate on his own – a decision that will have terrifying consequences for himself, and for Yasmin who will be abducted by her brother and held captive at a derelict warehouse on the outskirts of Istanbul. She witnesses a gun battle between Turkish police and her captors, leaving five people, including a police officer, dead. She escapes but is left to struggle for survival in the backstreets of Istanbul, alone, destitute and in great danger.

Once again, Commander Kadir Demercol and former Superintendent John Arbuthnot confront the dangerous task of resolving a case of murder and trafficking stretching Scotland to Istanbul. A case that will put their quick-thinking, courageous wives at risk.

J.T. Fernie is the pen name of Moira Macfarlane. Her love of telling stories led her first into a career in teaching, then as HMI with the former Scottish Office Education Department. In 2001 she moved to Italy as British Consul in Florence, a post which she held for eight years until retiring for the first time. Three years later she took over as Acting Director of the British Institute of Florence for fourteen months.

Moira returned to Scotland in 2013 and lives in Haddington. She continues to travel widely and the books she writes draw on her experience of other countries and other cultures. The Istanbul Gambit is her second book, following the success of The Istanbul Ring published in January 2023.