When the Devil's Idle

by Leta Serafim

Overview

In the Book of Revelation, written by St. John on the Greek island of Patmos, it was said a pale horse would appear whose rider was death, others would cry out for vengeance, and the stars of heaven would fall to the earth. Death does indeed come to Patmos when a German tourist is found murdered in the garden of one of the island's fabled estates. Yiannis Patronas, Chief Officer of the Chios police, is called in to investigate. He summons his top detective, Giorgos Tembelos, and his friend and amateur sleuth, Papa Michalis, to assist him. What the policemen discover will disturb them long after the conclusion of the case. Only six people were at the house at the time of the murder-the gardener and housekeeper, the victim's son and his wife and their two children, a boy of seven and a teenage girl of sixteen. All appear to be innocent. But access to the isolated estate is severely restricted. Surrounded by high walls, it has only one entrance: a metal gate that was bolted at the time of the crime. Patronas can only conclude that one of the six is a killer. He continues to probe, uncovering the family's many secrets. Some are very old, others more recent. All are horrifying. But which of these secrets led to murder? Book 2 of the Greek Islands Mystery series, which began with The Devil Takes Half.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781603819985
Publisher:	Coffeetown Press
Publication date:	09/01/2015
Series:	Greek Islands Mystery , #2
Pages:	192
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.48(d)

About the Author

Leta Serafim is the author of the Greek Islands Mystery series, as well as the historical novel, To Look on Death No More. She has visited over twenty-five islands in Greece and continues to divide her time between Boston and Greece.

Read an Excerpt

The police cruiser arrived later that day and Giorgos Tembelos and Papa Michalis disembarked, the priest inching down the ramp like a tortoise.

"I think the identity of the old man is the key," Papa Michalis announced when they'd all gathered in a taverna to review the case. "I analyzed it and that is my conclusion. It simply cannot be anything else. It has elements of an Agatha Christie story, one of her locked-room mysteries like And Then There Was None. Nobody else had access; ergo, one of the people inside the estate, a family member or a servant, must be the guilty party."

"Anyone could have gained access," Patronas pointed out. "The Bechtels were careless. They didn't keep the door locked and there were keys lying around everywhere."

"No matter. It's got to be one of them. We can interview other people forever, but it will eventually come back to them. Them and them alone."

"I think Father is right," Tembelos said. "The identity of the victim is the important thing here. There was nothing about him in any of the European databases I checked. I called our counterparts in Germany and asked them to run him through their system, but I doubt they'll find anything. It's like he never existed. We need to establish who he was. Could be he changed his name."

"Why would he change his name?" Patronas wondered.

"I don't know. "

The four of them were sitting outside by the water, it being too hot to venture inside. A haze hung over the sea, and the air was very still. Suddenly, a soft breeze rose up and stirred the tamarisk trees that lined the shore, setting their feathery branches in motion. Patronas liked the rustling sound the trees made, the relief the wind brought. It was almost as if he could hear the earth breathe.

I'll go swimming tonight, he told himself, looking out at the harbor. Float on my back and look up at the stars. Frolic like a dolphin.

Maybe he'd ask Antigone Balis to join him. He pictured her dripping wet, that long hair of hers hanging down over one shoulder like Botticelli's Venus. Adrift in his vision, he subsequently lost track of the conversation.

"Hey, boss, you with us?" Tembelos nudged him with his elbow.

Patronas made a show of straightening his back, stretching. "Sorry, it's the heat. Always makes me sleepy."

"You were grinning."

"So what if I was? A man's allowed to grin."

"I don't know, Yiannis," the priest said. "I think when one is discussing a homicide, it might be better if one dispensed with grinning. At such a time, such behavior is unseemly. It makes one appear insensitive at the very least."

Editorial Reviews

★ 08/03/2015
This classic fair-play whodunit, the excellent sequel to 2014’s The Devil Takes Half (Serafim’s first Greek Islands mystery), takes Yiannis Patronas, the endearing chief police officer on the island of Chios, to Patmos, where someone has bashed in the skull of Walter Bechtel, a 90-year-old German, in the garden of his foster son Gunther’s holiday residence—and carved a swastika on the victim’s forehead. When Patronas asks Gunther about his foster father’s past, Gunther becomes defensive and claims that his papa was “just an ordinary man” and did not commit any atrocities during WWII. Serafim does an especially good job of integrating Greece’s current financial struggles into the story line, and Patronas’s colleagues, especially an eccentric priest with a taste for seafood, lighten what otherwise could have been a very grim tale without minimizing the underlying horror of the background to the crime. Agent: Jeannie Loiacono, Loiacono Literary Agency. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

4 Stars: "The pairing of cynical Patronas and optimistic Michalis injects some humor in an otherwise moderately paced procedural. Serafim expertly creates the beauty of Greece. However, the real draws of this book are the fully developed, complex characters, and the facts on Greek culture and history. Book two in the Greek Islands Mystery series is sure to satisfy."
--Keitha Hart, RT Magazine, Sept. 2015 Issue

From the Publisher