Moris Senegor describes himself as a neurosurgeon by day, an author by night. Having already published a handful of non-fiction works, he has now entered the world of fiction with his novel entitled MARK TO MURDER: DEATH IN BUDAPEST. Senegor also describes himself as a fan of wine, classical music, cycling and photography. He cleverly has the opportunity to insert each of these into this novel.
Mark Kent sees his entire world turned upside down when he receives a strange message from an old friend. Kent is a successful radiologist who lives happily in San Francisco. One day, he finds a message scrawled on the back of a CT scan form in his native Turkish language. Apparently, the message is from his childhood school friend, Ahmet. This message includes a date and time for them to meet at the Gresham Palace Hotel in Budapest.
Upon arrival, Mark discovers that Ahmet has not shown up for the indicated time and place that was requested in his message. Mark searches for Ahmet’s hotel room and upon entering finds his old friend from Istanbul dead. Ahmet was apparently murdered and left in the dry bathtub inside his spacious hotel room. Now, in a foreign country and looking at a friend he hasn’t seen in decades, Mark can run or dig into what might have happened.
While inside Ahmet’s room, an iPhone starts ringing. The name of the person he calls is the same as a girl he used to know named Gunsu. When he follows her after finding Ahmet’s body, Gunsu asks Mark to come see her in Istanbul. As Mark considers this, he finds himself in the presence of an Interpol agent named Jean-Claude Girard. Girard asks Mark if he knows a Turkish doctor named Mahmut Erkan Gazioglu. Mark has no idea who this individual was and now he has learned that Interpol is looking for him. Within hours of arriving in Budapest, on a visit he had only allotted a few days for, Mark now finds himself smack in the middle of a situation he never dreamed of.
Mark decides to play amateur detective rather than return to San Francisco. He looks for the doctor the Interpol agent told him about and discovers that he may be involved in an organ trafficking ring. As he continues to follow various leads, he finds himself being followed again, this time by a private detective named Mustafa Ersoy. Ersoy had been hired by Ahmet’s wife to spy on her husband, and Mark had stumbled upon that case directly. Now it’s obvious to Mark that something really important was going on, but he’s still not sure what his old friend’s role was in it.
Despite being urged to return home to the US, Mark presses on with his own investigation. He learns that his friend Ahmet had wanted Mark to smuggle him into the US upon his return. Now, Mark acknowledged that whatever Ahmet’s role in this deadly situation was, it was enough to leave everything behind and start anew in a new country. He could also explain why he was traveling under the fictitious name of Nicolae Radu. Each new location and each corner Mark turns presents more and more danger to the point where he will have to make a decision about whether or not the truth is worth discovering.
MARK TO MURDER jumps back and forth at times to Mark and Ahmet’s school days and there may be some clues that shape what’s going on in the present day. It is clear that Moris Sengor is comfortable with the territory he is writing about and has an affinity for espionage. It will be interesting to see what he does next and see how his novels continue to improve over time. A good starting effort!
