Greece is the word

There're quite a few crime novels being published (or re-issued) this year set in Greece including Euro Crime's current competition prize, The Black Monastery by Stav Sherez (competition is open world-wide).

January saw the publication of Jeffrey Siger's Murder in Mykonos:

Synopsis: A young woman on holiday to Mykonos, the most famous of Greece's Aegean Cycladic islands, simply disappears off the face of the earth. And no one notices.

That is, until a body turns up on a pile of bones under the floor of a remote mountain church. Then the island's new police chief - the young, politically incorrect, former Athens homicide detective Andreas Kaldis - starts finding bodies, bones, and suspects almost everywhere he looks.

Teamed with the canny, nearly-retired local homicide chief, Andreas tries to find the killer before the media can destroy the island's fabled reputation with a barrage of world-wide attention on a mystery that's haunted Mykonos undetected for decades.

Just when it seems things can't get any worse, another young woman disappears and political niceties no longer matter. With the investigation now a rescue operation, Andreas finds himself plunging into ancient myths and forgotten island places, racing against a killer intent on claiming a new victim who is herself determined to outstep him.

Yesterday saw the re-issue by MIRA of the Alex Mavros trilogy by Paul Johnston. NB. The first book in the series has been retitled to Crying Blue Murder (formally A Deeper Shade of Blue).

Synopsis: Murder in paradise. American tourist Rosa Ozal has disappeared from an idyllic Greek island and investigator Alec Mavros is hired to trace her. Half-Greek, half-Scots, Mavros is in the perfect position to play the innocent holidaymaker.Mavros soon discovers there's more going on than meets the eye. Two young islanders have ended up in the nets of a local fishing boat; a British journalist has left the island without warning and the resident millionaire and museum owner seems to be very ill at ease. In a race to stop a terrible crime being repeated, Mavros must break through the whitewashed walls of silence to uncover the secrets and lies at the heart of this island paradise.


At the end of the month, Frances Lloyd's first crime novel, Nemesis of the Dead will be published by Robert Hale.

Synopsis: Ten holidaymakers are bound for Katastrophos, a tiny Greek Island steeped in superstition and ancient myth. Ten people whose lives are about to change forever, because one of them is planning a ruthless murder. Detective Inspector Jack Dawes of the Murder Squad is working undercover to prevent it, and takes his wife, Corrie, to the island, ostensibly on a belated honeymoon. Mayhem ensues when a storm destroys the island's primitive communications, cutting it off from civilisation. This, and a bizarre island ritual, provide the murderer with a perfect opportunity - but fate intervenes. Finally, time runs out and a deadly battle of wits develops between policeman and killer. It is Nemesis, dark-faced goddess of justice, who ends it with her powerful spirit of vengeance and retribution. Of the ten who arrive on Katastrophos, not all will return home.

July sees the third in the Greek Detective series from Anne Zouroudi, The Doctor of Thessaly.

Synopsis: A jilted bride weeps on an empty beach, a local doctor is attacked in an isolated churchyard - trouble’s come at a bad time to the backwatered village of Morfi, just as the community is making headlines with a visit from a national government minister. Fortunately, where there’s trouble there’s Hermes Diaktoros, the mysterious fat man whose tennis shoes are always pristine and whose investigative methods are always unorthodox.

In the latest instalment of the Mysteries of the Greek Detective, Hermes must solve a brutal crime that the victim does not seem to want solving, thwart the petty machinations of the town’s ex-mayor and his cronies and pour oil on the troubled waters of a sisters’ relationship.

And on 27 August, Arcadia is due to release Basic Shareholder by Petros Markaris the third in the Haritos series.

Synopsis: It's a very hot June when Commissar Kostas Haritos suddenly receives terrible news: the boat on which his daughter Katerina was travelling has been sequestrated by a terrorist commando. Moreover, his has to investigate the murder of an advertising model. Commissor Haritos must now keep cool to battle on two different fronts - the world of advertising and that of international terrorism.

Do let me know of any more new crime novels set in Greece, via the comments.