The Green Lady

March 5, 2012
Set in 2003, Johnston’s appealing fourth Alex Mavros mystery (after 2004’s The Golden Silence) takes the half-Greek, half Scottish PI to the island of Crete, to locate Maria Kondos, actress Cara Parks’s personal assistant, who’s disappeared. Parks, who’s starring in Freedom or Death, a film about the Nazi invasion and occupation of Crete, has refused to perform until Kondos is found. Mavros discovers that the filming has upset a number of people, including Rudolf Kersten, a German paratrooper who landed in Crete and later attempted to make reparations for Nazi atrocities, and David Waggoner, a British defender who now lives on the island. Mavros must deal with politics, corruption, and even the Cretan tradition of vendettas as secrets and grudges multiply. Fragments of memoirs from Kersten and Waggoner illustrate the horrors suffered by both sides during WWII. Readers will hope they won’t have to wait another eight years for Mavros’s next appearance.

January 14, 2013
The 2004 Athens Olympics provide the backdrop for Johnston’s absorbing fifth mystery featuring half-Greek, half-Scottish PI Alex Mavros (after 2012’s The Silver Stain). Angie Poulou, the wife of powerful businessman Paschos Poulou, hires Alex to find their missing 14-year-old daughter, but she doesn’t want Alex to let her husband know about the investigation. Meanwhile, a torturer known only as the Son is leaving a trail of the mutilated bodies of Demeter worshippers in his wake. Alex—with some help from his friend Yiorgos Pandazopoulos (aka the Fat Man)—follows the meager evidence to the small town of Paradheisos, where Paschos’s company is polluting the environment and Paschos’s lawyer friend, Rovertos Bekakos, is indulging his pedophilia. The banter between Alex and the Fat Man helps relieve the often grim action. Johnston does a good job concealing what exactly is happening and who’s working for or against whom until late in the game. Agent: Broo Doherty, Wade and Doherty (U.K.).