# Barbara Nadel

Barbara Nadel is an English crime and historical fiction author and former healthcare professional. She is best known for her Inspector İkmen series of novels set in Istanbul, Turkey, and her Francis Hancock series set in the East End of London. She has also written the Hakim and Arnold and the Ten Bells Street series, the latter under the pen name Mary Collins.

## Early life

Nadel was born and raised in the East End of London in the 1960s and 1970s. Her father had lived through World War II and witnessed the carpet bombing during The Blitz in the early 1940s. As a young child, she wanted to be an Egyptologist when she grows up. She frequently visited the local library to borrow books. "With no real gardens to play in", Nadel and her friends would "explore any other strange buildings we might find on our sojourns out to play in the street. Disused railway buildings, derelict houses, abandoned sheds" and even "on what we called 'bomb sites', massive craters in the ground where bombs had fallen."
Barbara Nadel trained as an actress before becoming a writer. Now writing full-time, she has previously worked as a public relations officer for the National Schizophrenia Fellowship's Good Companion Service and as a mental health advocate for the mentally disordered in a psychiatric hospital. She has also worked with sexually abused teenagers and taught psychology in schools and colleges, and was the patron of The Acorn Group in Shrewsbury, a charity (now apparently closed following a cut in funding) caring for those in emotional and mental distress. She has been a regular visitor to Turkey for more than 25 years.

## Writing career

Nadel had tried to publish her first novel in 1992 but was unsuccessful. Seven years later, in 1999, she contacted Julie Burton Literary Agency who liked her work and became her agent. Nadel next signed a three-book contract with Hodder Headline, with her debut novel Belshazzar's Daughter being published that year. Nadel's motivation to pursue publishing again had been financial difficulties after her husband lost his job.
Her Inspector İkmen series follow Çetin İkmen, a chain-smoking and hard-drinking detective on the Istanbul police force, and his colleagues Mehmet Süleyman, Balthazar Cohen, and Armenian forensic pathologist Arto Sarkissian. Ikmen's father's ancestry hails from the Cappadocia region while his mother is Albanian. The two main characters develop flaws as the series progresses, as Nadel explains, "People do get angry, have affairs, experience envy and have less than satisfactory relationships with their families in real life. That İkmen and Süleyman do these things too, makes them better characters."
Her Francis Hancock series, set in West Ham in the East End of London during World War II, follows undertaker Francis Hancock amid The Blitz. The first novel Last Rights was published in 2005. With the second series, Nadel became a full-time professional writer in 2006.
On 24 January 2011, Quercus announced having signed Nadel to write a new crime series set in modern-day East End which was to be published starting in Summer 2012 under the pen name B J Nadel. The book, A Private Business, was ultimately published and credited to Barbara Nadel. The series follows private investigator Lee Arnold and his British Bangladeshi assistant Mumtaz Hakim. Her parents had moved to the Spitalfields neighborhood in the 1960s from East Pakistan before the latter became independent in 1971. The series' publication moved to Allison & Busby starting with the fifth book.
Other published works include short stories in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, plus British magazines (My Weekly and Woman's Own), and travel pieces for British newspapers (The Guardian, The Sunday Times, The Independent), and the US food magazine Saveur.

## Personal life

Barbara Nadel is married. The couple have one adult son who is a comic book writer, and one grandson who was born in 2016.
According to Nadel, she cannot sleep until she's read for at least half an hour. She quit drinking alcohol but used to enjoy rakı. She enjoys eating almonds, pickles, fish sandwiches, baklava, profiteroles and kokoreç.
Since November 2014, Nadel and her husband have resided in Essex in the East of England. The couple previously lived in Lancashire in North West England with her six pet axolotls. Her Persian cat named Lily died on 23 December 2011. By 2020, she had one axolotl named Hattie and two cats.

## Awards

| Year | Award | Category | Nominees | Result |
| 2005 | Crime Writers' Association's Silver Dagger | Crime Writers' Association's Silver Dagger | Deadly Web (from Inspector İkmen, book #7) | Won |
| 2006 | Jury magazine's Flintyxan ("Flint Axe") | Best Historical Crime Novel | Dödlig rättvisa, Marianne Alstermark's Swedish translation of Last Rights (from Francis Hancock, book #1) | Won |
| 2007 | Crime Writers' Association's Dagger in the Library | Crime Writers' Association's Dagger in the Library | Herself | Nominated |
| 2007 | Theakston's Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award | Theakston's Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award | Dance with Death (from Inspector İkmen, book #8) | Nominated |
| 2008 | Redbridge Libraries' Big Red Read Awards | Book of the Year | Ashes to Ashes (from Francis Hancock, book #3) | Won |
| 2010 | Redbridge Libraries' Big Red Read Awards | Crime Fiction of the Year | Sure and Certain Death (from Francis Hancock, book #4) | Won |
| 2013 | Short Mystery Fiction Society's Derringer Award | Best short story | "Nain Rouge" (from Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, August 2012) | Nominated |