My Name Is Red

⚖The case for it

The murder of a miniaturist in 16th century Ottoman Istanbul, narrated by multiple voices including the victim and the color red itself. Pamuk frames a philosophical investigation into Islamic art, identity, perspective, and modernity as a murder mystery. A postmodern puzzle of extraordinary beauty; the Guardian placed it in their 1000 Crime Novels.

— the canon

✕The case against

As a mystery it dawdles. Whodunit matters less to Pamuk than the theory of Ottoman miniature painting, which the master miniaturists expound in long, similar speeches circling style, signature, and blindness, several rounds each. The middle two hundred pages are a seminar with a corpse in the corner, and the Black-Shekure courtship generates remarkably little heat for all its letters.

— the honest librarian