The Janissary Tree by Jason Goodwin
It has been ten years since the Auspicious Incident that saw the end of the feared and famed Janissary Corp, the elite corps of soldiers that were the terror of the world (and the terror of their own people), and the Ottoman Empire is poised to join Europe in a new modern world. That is until a series of brutal murders threaten to undo all that Sultan Mahmud II has done. Surely these murders cannot be the work of the Janissary Corps, the corps power has been broken and its survivors scattered to the farthest corners of the Empire and beyond. There is only one man who could get to the bottom of this problem and do it quickly before the mighty city of Constantinople and the rest of the Empire are thrown into chaos. From the great Topkapi palace the voice of the sultan cries forth “Send for Yashim!”