Mehmet Murat Somer

Somer was born in Ankara but moved to Istanbul in 1982, after graduating from technical university, and worked as an engineer for Sony, an experience he draws on in his writing. "I don't call upon the muses," he states, "I write more with my logic - my engineering side." He went on to become a manager for Citibank and he also calls upon this experience in his writing. "When I'm writing a novel, " he says, "I think about the speed, make the necessary calculations for which character should be seen when, and balance the harsh scenes with silent scenes." Somer has been a management consultant, conducting corporate seminars on management skills and personal development since 1994 and took up writing in 2001 following health problems that forced him into semi-retirement. "I had two open-heart operations: 1995 and 1996," he says, "I have been on the verge of life."

Somer was inspired to write detective fiction by the novels of his youth, "We don't have a tradition of literature at all. At all. The Ottoman culture doesn't include stories and novels in the tradition of western literature. The first Turkish novel was published only 150 years ago. In Turkey, books are not sold well. We don't have a huge audience. But in the 1960s, there were many crime novels. We even had some Mike Hammers." Somer however has an alternate take on the genre, "Lots of the crime novels I encounter are grim, horrifying, brutal," he says. "I don't want to see much blood. I don't want to see harsh feelings. I like light things like champagne or Bubblegum. I wanted to write something with joy, that readers could enjoy. Even with the darkest things that I write, I wanted to give them lightness - so the books have brilliant colours."

Mehmet Murat Somer (born 1959) is a Turkish author of crime fiction best known for his Hop-Çiki-Yaya series set in Istanbul and featuring an unnamed transvestite amateur detective.