THE WHISPERS OF NEMESIS

The Whispers of Nemesis is the fifth in Anne Zouroudi’s enjoyable and much acclaimed series The Mysteries of the Greek Detective, which is set in today’s rural Greece.

The sixth of a planned seven, The Bull of Minos, has just been published in hardback, and its predecessor now appears in mass paperback. In it Hermes Diaktoros, otherwise known as ‘the fat man’ makes another of his mysterious appearances as the ‘Athenian investigator’; his role in pursuit of justice remains an enigmatic one as he leads the reader on a gentle but indefatigable hunt through the mountains and islands of Greece to disentangle the truth.

According to a Greek ritual, the family of the famous poet Santos Volakis are gathered at the graveside for the rite of exhumation. He had died four years earlier and the family weeps for his loss as they re-establish their connection with his earthly remains. But the results of this exhumation are to horrify the family and the villagers of Vrisi, to reawaken the interest of the poet’s publishers and agent in his work and to spark off the arrival of Hermes Diaktoros in their midst. He tiptoes softly (despite his build) and implacably through the intricacies of the dark secrets to which the exhumation leads, secrets that include brutal murder.

The strength of Anne Zouroudi’s novels is her fine writing style. Her Greece has nothing to do with beaches and tavernas, or with the euro politics, but convincingly takes the reader into the Greek heartland, where mysteries and traditions stem from ages past. Her poet Santos Volakis sought to convey the soul of Greece in his work, and, with her deft touch and the inimitable Hermes Diaktoros, the author achieves the same end in The Whispers of Nemesis.