Category Archives: Greece

Review: The Messenger of Athens by Anne Zouroudi

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The main reason I chose this book was that I was in the mood for something a bit light and the series has, more than once, been compared to Alexander McCall Smith’s Number One Ladies Detective Agency books, several of which I have enjoyed. I should have known that these comparisons would be completely bogus.

The Messenger of Athens did have the same approach as an Alexander McCall Smith tale in that it told its story as a by-product of an examination of the minutiae of every day life in an exotic location. But there the similarities end as this was a tome of unending loneliness, depression and entrenched misogyny with half a dozen episodes of crude, violent sex and one gruesome description of a goat slaughter to round out the misery. Essentially it is the story of the inhabitants of what I think (indeed fervently hope) is a small fictional Greek island called Thiminos. These people are the sorriest bunch of selfish, small-minded, insular, bigots you could ever wish not to meet.

Among the island’s population lived Irini Asimakopoulos whose body was found at the bottom of a cliff and whose death was attributed to suicide. However Hermes Diaktoros, referred to throughout the book as The Fat Man, arrives on the island to determine whether in fact Irini might have been killed. He is an enigmatic, almost omnipotent character whose role is never really explained. He claims to have been sent from Athens but by whom? The Police? The woman’s family? The Gods? It’s not much of a spoiler to let on that I was no clearer on this subject by the end of the book (though this could be because I am particularly obtuse) (or could have something to do with my not paying close attention when I was supposed to be studying Greek mythology).

We learn that there were several people with a motive for Irini’s murder because she was thought to be having an affair with one of the married men on the island. The Fat Man takes us through a series of conversations with relevant island inhabitants to reveal the truth (or otherwise) of the island’s gossip and these are interspersed with flashbacks from key people’s perspectives including Irini’s, her husband’s and so on. For me the strongest part of the novel is the wrap up of this main thread because I didn’t see it coming, it depicted a truly ugly event but contained jolly good story telling and there was justice, of a kind, handed out. It took an awfully long time to get there though.

Even if I had not been looking forward to something lighter and happier I doubt I would ever have been fully enthralled in this tale as it’s a bit slow and lacking in tension for me. and the relationship between Irini and Theo is a bit too much like a bad gothic romance. For example there’s sequence in which Irini blathers on at considerable length about her attraction to the part of Theo’s arm which is hanging outside his truck window that made me want to poke my ears out with a compass but which I suspect the more romantically inclined reader would have found charming. However, I do admire the imagery of the writing and the way Zouroudi has created such an unpleasant cast of characters including the island itself. I’m sure it takes as much, if not more, skill to create hated characters as loved ones, and these people and this place are not easily forgettable.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

My rating 3/5
Narrator Sean Barrett
Publisher BBC WW [this edition 2010]
ISBN N/A (downloaded from audible.com)
Length 8 hours 50 minutes
Format audio (mp3)
Source I bought it

Review: Murder in Mykonos by Jeffrey Siger

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Andreas Kildis has a new job as chief of Police on the Greek Island of Mykonos. He’s not particularly happy with his promotion as it has, he believes, taken him away from the action in Athens. However, soon after he arrives he is called to one of the island’s many churches where the body of a young woman has been discovered. It soon transpires that a serial killer of beautiful young foreign women has been operating un-noticed for 20 years or so. While trying to hide the fact of the killings in case the tourists flee the island, Kildis and Tassos Stamatos, a Homicide investigator from a nearby island, have to track down the killer who they believe has kidnapped a young Dutch tourist in readindess for another murder.

I admit I’ve only spent a couple of days on Mykonos but I hated every minute of them (if you’ve never been there perhaps imagine an Ibiza full of holidaying Brits or Cancun during American Spring break). I do have a sense that Siger has captured the essence of the place which he depicts as one of natural beauty that the thousands of visitors there at any one time seem to go out of their way to ignore while they get drunk and have meaningless sex with strangers. The politics of corruption, misogyny and cover-up, particularly when it comes to protecting the island’s only viable industry, tourism, is also drawn very realistically. I don’t imagine Siger, an American who lives for part of each year on the island, will be on the local tourist board’s Christmas card list.

The rest of the book though, for me, wasn’t terribly believable or very entertaining. For a start I’m a bit fed up with serial killer novels in general (unless someone can offer a genuinely interesting slant such as Rob Kitchin’s The Rule Book which I read last month). The disproportionate number of such killers in fiction versus the real world makes most tales featuring them read like make-believe and I think I may have reached my lifetime saturation point for reading descriptions of young women being ickily tortured and killed because there’s a psychotic with a fetish on the loose. To be fair the descriptions of such activities in this book are at the less gruesome end of the gore scale but still I’ve had my fill. Personally I think the story of the single kidnapping of the young Dutch woman was suspenseful enough on its own and would still have provided Siger the opportunity to incorporate lots of local flavour. Looking for Hannibal Lecter behind every olive tree didn’t add anything of value for me.

The other disappointing aspect of the novel was the plotting which grew increasingly ludicrous. I actually imagined the author sitting back somewhere laughing at how he’d managed to get away with publishing such a nonsensical ending. A handful of potential suspects had been clumsily introduced earlier in the novel and, seemingly, one picked at random to be revealed as the culprit on the last page.

This is Siger’s debut novel and he does show potential with aspects of his writing like the character of Andreas Kildis who wrestles credibly with his need to investigate properly versus his desire to do what’s necessary politically to get himself back to Athens. However I can’t imagine myself rushing out to pick up the next book in this series if the plot and subject matter are as predictable and superficial as in this one.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

My rating 2/5

Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press [2009] ISBN: 978-1590585818 Length: 288 pages Setting: Mykonos, Greece, present-day

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Murder in Mykonos has also been reviewed by Lesa’s Book Critiques, Reading is vital to my Sanity who both liked it far more than I did and also by L J Roberts, an Amzon reviewer whose reviews I follow who seemed to share my feelings.

Review: The Black Monastery by Stav Sherez

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Title: The Black Monastery

Author: Stav Sherez

Publisher: Faber [2009]

ISBN: 978-0-571-24482-9

Length: 299 pages

After 33 years in Athens Nikos has returned to the fictional Greek island of Palassos to see out his remaining time in the police force as the island’s police chief. But rather than slide slowly into retirement Nikos has to deal with some grizzly murders that hark back to awful events which occurred when he was last on the island. Kitty Carson, a successful crime writer (and the only character to warrant both a first name and a surname if my memory serves me correctly) is holidaying on the island, as is Jason, an aspiring writer who has followed Kitty in a vaguely stalker-ish manner.

For me this was a book about the past and how time doesn’t really pass into nothing-ness but rather builds up in thin layers which, eventually, have to be burrowed through or they’ll bury you. All of the characters, including the island itself, have secrets or events in their histories that have some hold over the way their current lives are playing out and Sherez unravels these threads in a tantalising way. With a Dan Brown style thriller I tend to hastily turn the pages to find out what will happen next, whereas here it was a case of reading on to find out what had happened before. I was no less gripped than I am by more conventional thrillers but because the major events being described have, for the most part, already taken place I found myself more willing to take a little time with my reading and savour the delicious, metaphor-laden language for its own sake. Although Sherez demonstrates he is no slouch in the suspense department either with his genuinely page-turning conclusion.

The book is jam-packed with strong images: some beautiful, others gruesome. I’m consciously less fond of centipedes now than I was two days ago thanks to several descriptions of their particular creepiness. Then there’s the disturbing picture created by these simple lines, which describe the scene facing Nikos as he enters an annexe of the police station (formerly the island’s church) filled with broken statues

He stares at this strange gathering, the saints missing arms or legs like crash victims, their beatific expressions covered by a thick layer of dust. The Marys stare open-eyed into the blackness. Three of them, different sizes, all missing hands or feet.

There are, quite literally, dozens more passages which have created lasting pictures in my head, several of which may, I fear, inhabit my nastier dreams for some time.

I’m not surprised Sherez chose to set his story on a fictional island as I suspect the Greek Tourism Board might have banned him permanently from the country had he assigned all Palassos’ attributes to one of the real islands. Not only is there a mysterious religious cult and a history of gruesome murders but the depiction of the dance-clubbing, drug-popping somewhat desperate young tourists that throng to the island overshadow the glorious Mediterranean sunshine or anything else of a positive nature that might be on offer. At a different level he also shows the worst side of the island’s regular inhabitants, including authorities willing to use people’s prejudices to hide truths and perpetrate lies. It certainly isn’t a place I want to visit any time soon.

For me the characters are less successful than the other elements of the book. They’re not badly crafted or unbelievable, although of all the characters I found writer Kitty the least convincing as she switched a bit too suddenly from indecisive and troubled to investigator-in-control. More than that though I didn’t react very emotionally at all to any of the major characters which meant I missed out on that strong connection that only a much loved or fiercely hated character can bring to a reading experience. Perhaps this stems from the fact the book is a standalone so the author didn’t feel a need to create characters that would engender more of an emotional response from readers. Of course he might have tried very hard to create a sympathetic character or two and I just didn’t respond in that way. I was certainly curious to find out what would happen (or had happened) to all the players but I was never at risk of bursting into tears should one of them fall victim to the murderer.

I had never heard of Stav Sherez before selecting this book from those available for review for the month based solely on the fact it is set in Greece and I don’t recall ever having read any crime fiction set there before. I thoroughly enjoyed starting a book having no idea what to expect and was delighted with what I found. For me the writing itself is the star of the show. On multiple occasions I re-read phrases and sentences, often aloud, purely because I liked the way the words sounded together. Combined with the intriguing plot (including an ending I did not see coming) this made for a very satisfying reading experience.

My rating 4/5

Other Stuff

Reviewed at It’s a Crime (Or a Mystery)

Sherez has written one other standalone crime fiction novel called The Devil’s Playground.

I was provided with a free copy of The Black Monastery for review by the publisher via the Murder and Mayhem bookclub