HAPPY BIRTHDAY, TURK!

On his 26th birthday, p.i. Kemal Kayankaya—whose passport says German but whose face brands him as a despised Turk—tells Ilter Hamul that he'll try to find out who knifed her husband Ahmed, another Turk the police don't care about. In the three days before he wraps up the case, Kayankaya has time to identify Ilter's sister as a heroin addict, track down Ahmed's girlfriend (a pro in Frankfurt's red-light district), link his father-in-law's fatal accident three years earliler to an ingenious police coverup, and still survive beatings, gas attacks, and a close encounter with a Fiat. A blistering debut (the ``first volume in the bestselling series''): outcast Kayankaya is a perfect hardboiled detective, and the plot has more zip than most of the home-grown competition. Welcome to America, Turk.