Review - THE DOCTOR OF THESSALY, Anne Zouroudi

Reading a series in order, I’ve decided, is too normal. Or at least that’s the best excuse I can come up with for starting the Hermes Diaktoros series at book number three - THE DOCTOR OF THESSALY.

Set in a tiny Greek village, a crying jilted bride, leads quickly to the discovery of the groom, and local doctor, horribly scarred and blinded by an attack on the morning of his wedding. Surprisingly almost sanguine about the attack, the doctor is rushed off to hospital, refusing to see his intended bride, as the village slips back into its day to day activities of sniping at the new young mayor and wait for something to happen to jolt it out of economic malaise.

Into this intrigue meanders Hermes Diaktoros, another of those cerebral private investigators who spends a lot of time in this book struggling with the dreadful food and lodgings provided to him by the only option in the village, wrestling with the vagaries of the car he’s borrowed for the purposes of getting here in the first place, and ensuring that his white tennis shoes remain pristine.

Needless to say a fair dollop of eccentricity in the central character, the village identities, the plot line and the investigation techniques.

There’s something wonderfully Greek about this book, and all of the characters in it, with a good plot that resolves itself neatly and not completely unexpectedly, with a slightly more shocking reason behind it all than you’d imagine possible from something that reads as gently and lightly as THE DOCTOR OF THESSALY.

Definitely a series I’d like to read more of (she says knowing that the house is already groaning under the weight of Mt TBR).