Death Ex Machina Out Today
The newest installment of Gary Corby’s “Athenian Mysteries” series, DEATH EX MACHINA is out today!
As a fan of this series, I pre-ordered my copy back in January. I expect it to arrive later today, which means I haven’t read it yet so I can’t give you my thoughts on it. But here’s the official blurb:
A theatrical murder sends classical Athens into uproar.
It’s the time of the Great Dionysia, the largest arts festival of the ancient world, held each year in honor of Dionysos, the god of wine. But there’s a problem: A ghost is haunting Athens’s grand theater.
Nicolaos and his clever partner in sleuthing (and now in matrimony), the former priestess Diotima, are hired to rid the theater of the ghost so that the festival can begin. With the help of Theokritos, the High Priest of Dionysos, they exorcise the ghost publicly, while secretly suspecting that a human saboteur is the actual culprit.
Their efforts to protect the theater go rapidly downhill when one of the actors is found hanged from the machine used to carry actors through the air when they play the part of gods. It’s quite a theatrical murder.
As they dig into the actor’s past, they root out several possible motives for his public demise, ranging from blackmail to religious divergence. As the festival approaches and pressure mounts on all sides, can Nicolaos and Diotima hunt down the killer in time? Or will they simply have to hope for a deus ex machina?
Publisher’s Weekly said:
In Australian author Corby’s superior fifth whodunit set in ancient Greece (after 2014’s The Marathon Conspiracy), the city of Athens is preparing to host the Great Dionysia, “the largest and most important arts festival in the world.”
But the success of the event is in doubt after a series of accidents on the set of Sophocles’s play Sisyphus. The cast members believe this is the work of a ghost. Pericles, the city’s most powerful man, asks Nicolaos, his inquiry agent, to get rid of the ghost.
Unfortunately, not long after Nico arranges for an exorcism ritual, one of the actors is murdered, suspended from the machine designed to hold the character of Thanatos, the god of death, in midair during the performance.
Under pressure to find the killer quickly as the festival start date looms, Nico resorts to a clever and amusing ploy to buy more time.
Corby again manages to effortlessly integrate laugh-out-loud humor into a fairly clued puzzle.
Here are a few places you can get your copy:
