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A Darker God: A Laetitia Talbot Mystery (Mortalis)

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A Darker God: A Laetitia Talbot Mystery (Mortalis) is my introduction to Barbara Cleverly fiction, and I enjoyed getting to know Laetitia Talbot who reminds me of Deanna Raybourn's Julia Grey and Tasha Alexander's Emily Ashton, although Talbot's adventures take place in a later era.

It is 1928, and Letty, a forward-thinking Britisher, has just returned to Athens, Greece from an archeological dig. Her mentor, Professor Sir Andrew Merriman -- former soldier, " 'digger, classicist, and writer' " -- thinks someone is following him. It turns out to be Percy Montacute, a Scotland Yard chief inspector seconded to Greece. The two men served together in the military, and they catch up on the news. Merriman explains he is planning to stage a version of Aeschylus's play, Agamemnon.

A few months later, the dress rehearsal for the play is in full swing in an outdoor theater near the Acropolis. Letty is watching from front row center with Maud Merriman, Andrew's wife. "As the sun set, the evening sky began to flush with grey-purple light....It should have been a moment of deep peace but, somewhere just out of sight, a man was screaming in his death throes." As it turns out, the play and reality coalesce, and by the end of that evening a real body has been discovered. The Greek police and Chief Inspector Montacute are on the case. Letty is volunteered by Montacute to help him with his investigations, first as a recorder of witness information and then as someone whose familiarity with the Merriman house can ease the interviews there. But before twenty-four hours pass, someone else dies, and the victim, breathing her last, accuses a young woman who played the husband-killer Clytemnestra the evening before. Letty and her beau, rather agnostic Vicar Gunning, find themselves in a swirl of intrigue, both political and personal. Letty is certain the wrong person is being held for murder, but how to prove it?

Behind aspects of the intricate plot is a 1923 historical event called "The Population Exchange Between Greece and Turkey" which uprooted millions and caused deaths that could have been avoided. In A DARKER GOD, one man craves eye-for-an-eye revenge for the death of loved ones during that transfer, and he has targeted someone close to Letty. With a storytelling symmetry, the denouement takes everyone back to the amphitheater and AGAMEMNON, but the fates seem to have decreed that this production is doomed.

Cleverly seemingly effortlessly incorporates the echoes of Alexander of Macedon, Agamemnon, and the overseeing "dark god," Dionysus into her tale. She also finds place for the early twentieth century Eleutherios Venizelos, "world-renowned revolutionary, politician, and hero" and his "glamorous, mysterious" wife, Helena, as well as a few other historical figures such as the deposed George the Second, High King of the Hellenes.

Laetitia Talbot first appeared in The Tomb of Zeus (Laetitia Talbot Mysteries) and then in Bright Hair About the Bone (Laetitia Talbot Mysteries). This, her third outing, will likely not be her last as she has unfinished business in Salonika. And that's a good thing because it is a pleasure to follow such literary-laced, cleverly-plotted historical whodunits as A DARKER GOD.

Laetitia Talbot (or "Letty" as she's generally known) is back for her third mystery, once more discovering that a contemporary crime has eerie echoes of the past. Set in Athens in 1928, Letty watches the dress rehearsal of a performance of Aeschylus' "Agamemnon" in an open-air theatre, looking forward to the climactic scene in which King Agamemnon is murdered in his bathtub. She herself has prepared the dummy corpse for the event, and she's eager to see the effect. She's only mildly hampered by the presence of Maud Merriman, a dour, fussing, older woman that Letty nevertheless feels compelled to endure - mainly because Letty is the former lover of Maud's husband Andrew Merriman (as established back in The Tomb of Zeus).

But reality and drama merge when the bloodied figure in the bathtub is revealed to be that of Andrew; stabbed through the heart. Luckily, a police inspector is amongst the cast, and he ropes in Letty to help him organise the suspects, two of whom stick out in particular: the loud, arrogant Geoffrey Melton and the woman who played the part of the vengeful queen Clytemnestra: Thetis Templeton.

With Maud complaining of the house being watched, the fact that Andrew was on the verge of publishing a controversial book, rumors of illicit affairs and pregnancies, and the tense political environment, there are ample motivations and suspects for murder floating about. Teaming up with her love interest William Gunning, Letty makes it her business to do the right thing by her former-lover and discover the identity of his killer.

Although the Laetitia Talbot mysteries never *quite* match up to the excellence of Barbara Cleverly's other detective Joe Sandilands, the author once more plots a fascinating and intricate mystery that weaves together ancient history with the liveliness and discovery of the 1920s, all of which is laced with the themes and motifs of Greek mythology. Some basic knowledge of the time periods and famous characters that Cleverly involves may be helpful, as the likes of Alexander the Great, the legendary characters of Greek myth, various gods and goddesses, and even the more contemporary figures of Prime Minister Eleutherios Venizelos and his wife Helen, are all incorporated into the proceedings.

Also noteworthy is her use of "The Population Exchange Between Greece and Turkey" a treaty that was signed in 1923, and which caused the displacement of over two million people in the enforced immigration that followed, many of whom succumbed to poverty or illness after their expulsion from their homeland. I admit, I had never heard of the event until reading this novel, and in an essay written by Cleverly at the conclusion of the novel, she sheds more light on this rather horrific chapter of human history.

Cleverly has always been masterful at making her historical/mythological borrowings relevant to the plot, and that's certainly the case here, in which the consequences of the treaty are pivotal to at least one character's motivation. It's tied in neatly with the mystery of Alexander the Great's missing tomb and the mysterious gift that Andrew bequeaths to Letty, as well as the themes of vengeance and murder found in the opening story of Agamemnon.

Letty is a spunky enough female lead, though often overshadowed by her co-stars, and still not quite up to the standards of Joe - yet it's hard to dislike someone so witty and wise. The story itself has a few fits and starts in terms of pacing at the beginning of the story, but hang in there, as somewhere around chapter ten (they're quite short), things really start to heat up. Best of all, the story ends with the promise of new adventures to come, as Letty has a promise to fulfill in Salonika.

It was a very well done mystery and I enjoy the characters more and more with each new book

Letty, as she is known, is not typical of that era of woman. I like a mystery with interesting people and details of the setting and time period. A wide choice on Amazon

I wanted to like this series, and just can't. In this book, tedious pages are given over to what is supposed to be brittle and witty conversation, but all of the characters end up sounding alike and they aren't interesting enough to follow. William Gunning, a troubled former soldier/minister who is now romantically linked to Letitia doesn't get much exposure, and he's probably the best of the lot. Letitia is just tiresome - the character doesn't behave in any reasonable way, is too mature in one scene and too spoiled in another. I love the Sandilands series, particularly those set in India, and I wish Ms. C. would send him back there for more adventures.

In 1928 in Athens, archeologist Sir Andrew Merriman directs a production of Aeschylus's Agamemnon in the Athenian amphitheatre. During a dress rehearsal, Sir Andrew replaces the dummy in the bathtub stabbing scene. He is dead with a knife to his heart as his wife Lady Maud and his former lover Laetitia "Letty" Talbot watch the practice session.

Scotland Yard Detective Chief Inspector Percy Montacute happens to be one of the performers while assigned to CID duty in Athens. He and Athenian security chief General Konstantinou lead the investigation with Talbot as a consultant while her lover William Gunning objects. The police quickly arrest Maud's cousin Thetis, another of Sir Andrew's lovers and who had the role of Clytemnestra, but free her. Observers inform the cops the two cousins argued loudly in public just before Maud fell off a balcony to her death. Since Talbot is named in Merriman's will, she becomes a suspect too. However, after being abducted by a psychopathic Macedonian, she realizes Sir Andrews' soon to be published work on Alexander is the underlying motive to the homicides that include more victims.

Talbot's latest historical mystery (see The Tomb of Zeus and Bright Hair About the Bone) contains a terrific whodunit with a strong sense of time and place. The engaging storyline brings out Depression Era Greece through the archeologists, the play and the police procedural investigation. Although archeology seems to be a deadly affair in this series and none of the cast match up to Scotland Yard Detective Joe Sandilands (would have been neat if he instead of Montacute was conveniently in Athens), fans will enjoy A Darker God, reminiscent of Carola Dunn's Daisy Dalrymple.

Harriet Klausner