Before I decided to binge on Carol Higgins Clark, I was wandering around the Walnut Hills Branch Library, not content with any of the unread books at my house, needing to read something pleasurable that didn’t matter. And found A Darker God, by Barbara Cleverly (which I assume is a pseudonym – if not, I would change it!)
This book is one of a mystery series that I am sure is quite wonderful, though I may never read another one. It’s set in Athens, Greece and its environs, in the 1920s, and has a wonderful feel of real city, real stones, real food, real folk. Like Elizabeth Peters’ Egyptian mysteries, you can smell and feel the dust and the heat.
Laetitia Talbot, our heroine, is a modern woman living a modern life – which is to say, a complicated life. Which is woven into another complicated life in the story – Clytemnestra, wife of Agamemnon, through the Aeschylus play, being produced by a crowd of Brits and Europeans in one of the old temples.
This is a wonderful crowded book, with mystery, deaths, great characters, including two modern guys, political intrigue, and lots of detail about Greek life in the 20s. Aaaaah.