Book Review: The Doctor of Thessaly by Anne Zouroudi

Book reviews

13 Jan

The Doctor of Thessaly (The Greek Detective #3) by Anne ZouroudiPaperbackReview copy provided by publisherBloomsbury, 2011 Synopsis- A jilted bride weeps on an empty beach. A local doctor is attacked in an isolated churchyard. Trouble arrives at a bad time to the backwater village of Morfi, just as the community is making headlines with a visit from a high-ranking 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.Hermes must investigate a brutal crime, thwart the petty machinations of the town's ex-mayor and his cronies, and try to settle the troubled waters of two sisters' relationship. But how can he unravel a mystery that not even the victim wants solved?Set against a radiant Mediterranean backdrop, THE DOCTOR OF THESSALY is a spellbinding mystery about the dark consequences of envy.Review- The Fat Man is back (and yes it seems the author has continued the use of the 'fat man' to refer to her protagonist). I accidently picked up this book not knowing it was the third in The Greek Detective series (I meant to read the second) but it must have been sitting on my shelves out of order so this is the one I read. It didn’t seem to matter though, because each of these books work well as a standalone. Again, I learnt little about the Fat Man, known as Hermes Diaktoros. This time around it didn’t really bother me because I quite enjoyed getting to know the characters that were connected with the crime he investigated. On the day of his wedding, a foreign doctor is attacked resulting in facial disfigurement and blindness. His fiancé is distraught; a spinster who fears her last chance at a conventional life is slipping through her fingers. Set in the village of Morfi, Hermes infiltrates the community subtly without failing to make his presence known. The victim is reluctant to press charges but Hermes works for an authority outside the police force and his curiosity has been piqued by this crime. Zouroudi has quite a unique writing style in crime fiction with narrative descriptions and a strong sense of place and mood on the Greek Islands. She masterfully unfolds the mystery behind the crime not so much through traditional crime investigation methods, but through the interactions Hermes has with the locals and the stories he discovers along the way. Once again, I was left guessing as to the identity of the perpetrator until the very end. Hermes’ unconventional methods allow the truth to be uncovered with a level of freedom of those involved to attain justice even if it is not by usual legal methods.