On January 27, 1973, Mehmet Baydar, the Turkish Consul General of Los Angeles, and Bahadır Demir, the Vice Consul, were murdered in a hotel cottage in Santa Barbara, California by a 73- year old retired Armenian named Gourgen Yanikian. The diplomats were both shot at point-blank range in a deceptive ruse that Yanikian had planned for months. After emptying his first gun into the two men, Yanikian then shot Baydar and Demir each in the head with a second weapon, to make sure they were dead. He then called the police, reported the crime and sat down to wait for the arresting officers to arrive. In a lengthy manifesto posted to media outlets and individuals around the world days before the murders, Yanikian called on the global Armenian diaspora to take up arms against the Turkish government and kill its representatives. This historical tragedy serves as the prologue to David Minier’s novel, The Ararat Illusion, and the book’s main character, detective Michael Page, who was the (fictional) first responder to the double homicide.