Black Life

October 14, 2013
Johnston probes Greek anti-Semitism, both during the Holocaust and afterward, in his standout sixth mystery featuring Athens PI Alex Mavros (after The Green Lady). Aron Samuel was believed to have died in Auschwitz with much of his family, but when someone claims to have spotted him alive and well in Thessaloniki, French jeweler Eliezer Samuel hires Mavros to find the truth. The present-day investigation alternates with a first-person narrative set during WWII, providing familiar, but nonetheless harrowing, accounts of the Nazi slaughter of Europe’s Jews. The detective’s inquiries don’t make things simpler for the surviving Samuels, or for Mavros himself, whose wife’s infertility has strained their marriage. The colorful lead, with his unusual heritage (his father was a leader of the Greek Communist party and his mother was Scottish) and dogged commitment to his work, is a worthy addition to the growing roster of contemporary Mediterranean sleuths. Agent: Broo Doherty, Wade and Doherty (U.K.).

December 15, 2013
Scots/Greek private eye Alex Mavros' sixth case sets him on the trail of an old man who's recently been spotted in Thessaloniki even though he died in Auschwitz. Jewelry king Eliezer Samuel thought he'd finished mourning his uncle over 60 years ago. So he's stunned when Ester Broudo tells Rabbi Savvas Rousso that she saw Aron Samuel outside a wedding. Though it defies belief that Aron could have survived and then hidden himself for all these years, Eliezer knows concentration camps' records are notoriously unreliable. So he asks Alex, a well-known missing persons specialist, to fly to Thessaloniki along with Eliezer's daughter, Rachel, to follow the trail of the apparition. Alex isn't crazy about working with Rachel, who seems to have her own agenda, or leaving behind his ladylove, social worker Niki Glezou, who's already distraught because she can't get pregnant. But the bills for the home he shares with Niki must be paid, so he takes the job, hoping that he can stay one step ahead of the Son, the killer who survived Alex's last case (The Green Lady, 2013) and swore vengeance. Unlike Alex, readers know from the beginning that Aron is indeed alive courtesy of alternating chapters told from his perspective that trace his story from World War II to the present. It's such a horrifying tale that the odds of Alex surviving his encounter with "the abyss of the twentieth century's greatest crime" unscathed seem negligible. Just as high a body count as Alex's last two cases, though the Holocaust back story sharpens this one to a knife point.

COPYRIGHT(2013) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

December 1, 2013

Already under siege from an earlier case that has left a known assassin at large, Greek/Scottish PI Alex Mavros has done everything possible to keep his loved ones safe, but it's a slippery slope at best. He's about to take a case involving an apparent sighting of Aron Samuel, an elderly Greek Sephardic Jew from Thessaloniki who was thought to have died in a World War II concentration camp. Hired by Aron's surviving younger brother, Alex is irritated by his client's daughter, Rachel, and her insistence on accompanying him to the Macedonian region in northern Greece. His wariness is justifiable; readers know that Rachel has a covert agenda of her own. Through flashback chapters set in the 1940s, readers understand the depth of hatred coursing through Aron Samuel's veins. As Alex's investigation heats up, it seems that Aron is very much alive and that he hasn't completed his life's work. VERDICT With its multiple points of view, this PI Mavros entry (after The Green Lady) pulsates with suspense and a sensation of dread as the PI fights both the Samuel family's demons and his own. Consider this Balkan noir at its best.

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 1, 2013
In his sixth outing (following The Silver Stain, 2012), half-Greek, half-Scottish missing-persons specialist Alex Mavros is hired to find a ghost. Eliezer Samuel had always thought that his Uncle Aron died in a concentration camp, one of the 60,000 Jews of Thessaloniki who were deported during the Nazi occupation. But a recent sighting brings Samuel and his daughter Rachel back to Greece to investigate. Chapters alternate between Mavros and Rachel's investigation and tales of Aron's forced labor disposing of gas-chamber victims as a Sonderkommando. Mavros' search is complicated by an active neo-Nazi cell operating in Thessaloniki and by pressure from his Athens girlfriend, who wants to start a family but still lives in fear of a serial killer targeting Mavros' loved ones. The descriptions of life in the concentration camps are harrowing, as are Aron's actions as a Nazi-hunting vigilante after the war. A strong addition to the series.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)