3 stars. Tasha Alexander is an awesome writer; she is on my short list of must-read authors. This book was so well done, at first. Newlyweds Lady Emily and Colin journey on the Orient Express to exotic Constantinople and they meet a man on the train. He gets them invited to the palace for an opera at the sultan’s private opera house; murder then happens. Okay, the setup was great and I knew right away this would be a great book. From the delicious richness of the Orient Express to the vivid descriptions of Constantinople, we are immersed in the opulent palaces of Yildiz and Topkapi; the harem and haman (Turkish bath) leapt from the pages and I was there with Emily as she conducts her investigation. Very well done but then the middle of the book dragged on for too long. Too much back and forth between the palaces and the various characters that didn’t seem to be there except to be rude to Emily. The sultan was interesting but even he blew hot and cold. The actual murder was easily solved; the solution and explanation were telegraphed very early on in the book. The various sub plots around the harem were tedious since the characters were two-dimensional and I didn’t care much what happened to any of them. The main subplot gave away part of the plot because Emily was so fixated on it when she definitely should not have been-it was a device to introduce something that will probably play out in the next book. Ivy is good in this one and I didn’t even mind Margaret-she added to the plot this time.