American Professor Felix Markarian went to Istanbul, Turkey to meet an antiquities dealer and to appraise an ancient book, called a codex. When the police tell Markarian that the dealer has been murdered and the book stolen, the gay scholar is drawn into the investigation. Murder in the Grand Bazaar: An Intellectual Thriller, set in Istanbul at the end of the last century, suddenly thrusts a mild-mannered academic into a world of thieves and killers where nothing and no one is what they seem. It explores the trade in smuggled ancient texts as well as the historical context of lost Christian books.