As the second installment in Grimwood's Arabesk trilogy, EFFENDI follows Ashraf (Raf) Bey, now chief of detectives in glittering El Iskandryia; a 21st century Ottoman Empire akin to our present day Middle East, complete with madersa, horse-drawn calechès, djinn and daily calls to prayer.

Hamzah Effendi is going to be tried for murder, and Raf is to prosecute him. Zara, Raf's discarded ex-fiancée is set to defend her father. This time, not even the fox can smooth things over for Ashraf Bey. No one but Raf hears the fox, but Hani, his niece, seems to understand its existence better than any child should.

With a flurry of interesting characters, EFFENDI is a miasmic experience and definitely worth a read. A series of flashbacks to a holy war fought by children forms the backbone of this marvelous book. Graphic accounts of serial murders are interspersed to leave a reader wondering who could be committing such grisly crimes, and asking why the modus operandi for each murder keeps changing.