Death on Delos is the seventh adventure for Nicolaos and Diotima, and as you can tell from the cover, Diotima is slightly pregnant!
I won't summarize the book for you, because the highly esteemed Publishers Weekly has done a sterling job of describing the opening disasters in their review, which you will find to the right.
You might notice it's a starred review. It's also the seventh straight starred review for this series. That's kind of a big thing in the publishing world.
Pub day means you can now buy the book in stores. As opposed to the Australian meaning of pub, a place where you go to drink beer. Though as it happens, the Egyptians in The Singer From Memphis are totally into their beer. Nico can't get a decent cup of wine anywhere. But he still has to solve murders and uncover hidden treasures in the trackless wastes of the desert.
Pub day is a weird thing for an author. We don't fly from store to store selling the books personally. We didn't print the books ourselves; we didn't ship them to their shelves. All those highly important things are done by other wonderful people.
So what does an author do on pub day? Well, he writes the next book.
Death On Delos is finished in first draft. I've even written the author note that so many people like to read. It will be Book 7 of the Athenian Mysteries. The Singer From Memphis is Book Six ... and that's really quite remarkable.
I hope you enjoy reading Nico & Diotima's adventures as much as I like writing them.
Here is the Publishers Weekly review for The Singer From Memphis. It is a starred review!
The astonishing thing is, the Athenian Mysteries have now earned six starred reviews in a row.
If you would like to see what happens when a classical Greek PI finds himself in ancient Egypt in the company of a budding history writer named Herodotus, then this might be the book for you.
"Corby’s trademark blend of humor, fascinating historical detail, and accessible presentation of the politics of the time has never been better."
Gary Corby. Soho Crime
ISBN 978-1-61695-668-4
Early in Corby’s exceptional sixth novel set in ancient Greece (after 2015’s Deus Ex Machina ), Pericles, the most powerful man in Athens, asks Nicolaos, “the only private agent” in the city-state, to accompany the historian Herodotus on a trip to Egypt.
Ostensibly, Nicolaos will serve as a bodyguard, but his real mission is to aid Egyptians rebelling against Persian rule. The rebels’ leader, Inaros, who claims to be descended from the last pharaoh, has asked for a “man of cunning and resource” to help take the city of Memphis, the last stronghold controlled by the enemy.
Pericles shares his suspicions with Nicolaos that Herodotus may be a spy in the employ
of the Persians. Later, pirates almost scuttle the journey to Egypt, and Nicolaos nearly loses his client to a master Spartan assassin. Eventually, Nicolaos must solve a murder, but this is more spy thriller than whodunit.
Corby’s trademark blend of humor, fascinating historical detail, and accessible presentation of the politics of the time has never been better.
Agent:
Janet Reid, FinePrint Literary. (May)
Book research has its advantages when you're the author of The Athenian Mysteries. I and my family have been in Greece, and it's been a fun and very hectic time. Here's the view from our hotel room. That's the Acropolis. It was dusk when we arrived and the first thing we did was take a picture.
So now in the posts to come I will deliver some photos, descriptions, and random thoughts. Let me begin with Tripod Road.
When I told my literary agent that we were in Athens she replied, "Walking in the steps of Nico and Diotima!"
I replied, "It's funny you should say that, because the hotel we're staying at is on Tripod Road."
In the books, my hero Nicolaos and the lovely Diotima have to walk up and down Tripod Road almost every day. It's the main road from their house to the agora.
Tripod Road was lined with victory tripods, put up by the winners of the choral contests at the arts festival called the Great Dionysia. Pericles himself had a victory tripod on Tripod Road, because he funded a winning play.
These days Tripod Road is called Nikodimou Street, but we know it was the original Tripod Road, because there's a single surviving tripod. It's called the Lysikrates Monument, erected by a very happy fellow named Lysikrates to celebrate a victory at the Great Dionysia some time around 334BC, and it's known to have been built on the west side of Tripod Road. Here it is, and it's about 100 meters down the road from where we're staying.
Yes, I know it doesn't look remarkably like a tripod. The victory monuments became very ornate over time.
So this means every time we walk down the road for the inevitable evening dessert of waffle and chocolate sauce, we are in fact walking in the footsteps of Nico and Diotima.
