Crime Fiction on a Euro Pass: Greece: Atreus, Hermes and Pericles

This week in Crime Fiction on a Euro Pass we've reached Greece.

I haven't read many novels either by Greek authors or actually set in Greece.

I have decided to highlight three very different novels I reviewed earlier on this blog. All have links to ancient Greece and to the time of legends.

THE MASK OF ATREUS by A.J. Hartley
There are really two beginning points for this thriller/mystery. In the dying days of World War Two, a German tank convoy escorting a truck is intercepted by an American platoon. In the skirmish that follows most of the Germans are killed and the rest flee leaving the truck behind. Inside the truck is a single crate stencilled with the German eagle and swastika. The contents of this crate are pivotal to the rest of the story.

THE MASK OF ATREUS then leaps to the present day. At 3 a.m. Deborah Miller, curator of a small private museum in Atlanta, Georgia, is awakened by the third strange phone call for the night. This one sends her hurrying back to the museum which she left just after midnight following a successful promotional evening. At the museum, in a room she did not even know existed, she finds the body of Richard Dixon, her mentor and the museum's founder and director. On the shelves around the room is a treasure trove of what seem to be genuine Mycenaean antiquities. read more

THE MESSENGER OF ATHENS by Anne Zouroudi

This book which I reviewed more recently is the beginning of a series featuring Hermes Diaktoros, referred to in the novels as "the fat man".

When the battered body of a young woman is discovered on a remote Greek island, the local police are quick to dismiss her death as an accident. Then a stranger arrives, uninvited, from Athens, announcing his intention to investigate further. His methods are unorthodox, and he brings his own mystery into the web of dark secrets and lies. Who has sent him, on whose authority is he acting, and how does he know of dramas played out decades ago?

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A DEAD MAN FELL FROM THE SKY, Gary Corby

Set in Athens in 416 BC, this novel had me hooked from the beginning.
How could I resist this opening paragraph?

A dead man fell from the sky, landing at my feet with a thud. I stopped and stood there like a fool, astonished to see him lying where I was about to step. He lay facedown in the dirt, arms spread wide, with an arrow protruding out of his back. He'd been shot through the heart.

Gary Corby is an Australian author.

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