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The Pericles Commission by Gary Corby

It is the year 461BC and in Athens a dead man falls from the sky, landing at the feet of a surprised Nicolaos. The body is that of Ephialtes, the politician who only days before turned Athens into a democracy.

Nicolaos is commissioned by rising young statesman Pericles to find the assassin, but while he walks the mean streets of ancient Athens, what is really on his mind is how he can get closer to Diotima, an intelligent and annoyingly virgin priestess and also how to shake off his irritating twelve-year-old brother, Socrates. Pericles is keen to find who the assassin is though, because not only is democracy threatened, it would appear his father was the last to see Ephialtes alive. At stake are not just honour, justice or truth but democracy and freedom from a society where one is judged on the stature and deeds of one’s father.

This is the first in a series of historical mystery novels set in ancient Greece. It starts off by giving a timeline to democracy, then listing actors in the way a play might, and while this is a novel, it could be possibly re-worked as a play with little difficulty. Some of the comments beside the characters do however allude to this being more of a comedy than your usual murder mystery. It also gives an interesting point of view of the changing political structure of classical Greece and of the love, hate, rivalry, artistic genius and dramatic events that occupied Athens at the time.

RRP $30.00
Published and distributed by Penguin Group

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