The beautiful Greek islands are the setting for this eleventh novel in the crime series about Chief Inspector Andreas Kaldis. We definitely feel local corruption and collusion abide here, far from the eyes of the EU in Brussels. Anyone who has read the classic series about Donna Leon’s Inspector Brunetti will feel on familiar ground, swapping Venice for a more mountainous locale.
A DEADLY TWIST begins when the rural island of Naxos is selected for journalist Nikoletta Elia to write up a story on tourism versus farming and nature. Her editor Giorgos Pappas gets concerned when she vanishes after sending in a story from an unexpected source - a black hat hacker she met in a taverna who claims he carried out several crimes, a hacker for hire to shadowy figures. The hacker has no reason to harm her, but maybe those behind him don’t want to be revealed.
Kaldis sends out his best detective, Yanni, who uses flights, ferries and hired vehicles, while trying to keep a lid on any rumors of a kidnapping. But that detective is met with stony silence and partial truths from the locals, then with violence. If something is going on, the roots go deep, in time as well as in society. Kaldis himself is required to get to the bottom of the matter.
I enjoyed the descriptions of roadside tavernas, village establishments with locally grown foods and wines. The scenic countryside is a major character during this crime story. Twists in the cliffside roads conceal danger and mirror the path of the investigation. Goats scamper, snakes bask and the morning’s fish catch is toted up the hill for cooking. The villagers simultaneously depend on tourists for income and resent their modernizing intrusion. As with islands elsewhere though, we see that young people are leaving, and older people are feeling the stiffness of hard work.
I had not encountered police detective Kaldis previously, so I took a little while to settle into the story, but he did remind me of Brunetti, even down to the sociable wives of the officers. So once the narrative settled with him, I knew where I stood. Author Jeffrey Siger is American, a former Wall Street lawyer from Pittsburgh living in Greece, just as Donna Leon is German. Sometimes a situation must be reflected by outsiders because insiders would never spill the beans. A DEADLY TWIST is handsomely constructed to bring the past into the present, scraping away layers of protection until the corrupt face of Greece is revealed.
When Athens journalist Nikoletta Elia disappears while on assignment on the island of Naxos, her editor calls on Chief Inspector Andreas Kaldis to investigate. Sent to report on the conflict between preservationists and advocates for expanded tourism, Nikoletta is approached by a fan who takes credit for several suspicious deaths she'd reported on in the past. The assassin claims to have abandoned that life, and convinces the reporter to write about him and his murderous exploits for hire.
Kaldis sends his deputy, Yianni, to look into her disappearance when an unidentified body is found at the base of a cliff. Who is the mysterious corpse, and where is Nikoletta? Leads turn into more dead bodies in this twisting tale of greed, corruption, and murder that puts Kaldis, his family, and members of his team in the path of a ruthless killer who will stop at nothing to keep dark secrets buried—forever.
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