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    The Taint of Midas: A Seven Deadly Sins Mystery
    Unavailable
    The Taint of Midas: A Seven Deadly Sins Mystery
    Unavailable
    The Taint of Midas: A Seven Deadly Sins Mystery
    Audiobook9 hours

    The Taint of Midas: A Seven Deadly Sins Mystery

    Written by Anne Zouroudi

    Narrated by Bill Wallis

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    Gabrilis Kaloyeros is a bee-keeper on the beautiful Greek island of Arcadia. The ruined Temple of Apollo has been in his care for decades, and he has worked to protect it. But when crooked developers take over the island and the value of the land soars, he is persuaded through unscrupulous means to sign away his interest. Hours later he meets a violent, lonely death.

    When detective Hermes Diaktoros finds his friend's battered body by a dusty roadside, the police quickly name him the prime suspect. But with rapacious developers threatening Arcadia's most ancient sites, many stand to gain from Gabrilis's death. Hermes resolves to avenge his old friend and find the true culprit, but his methods are, as ever, unorthodox.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDreamscape Media Audio
    Release dateJan 14, 2014
    ISBN9781629231778
    Unavailable
    The Taint of Midas: A Seven Deadly Sins Mystery
    Author

    Anne Zouroudi

    Anne Zouroudi was born in England and has lived in the Greek islands. Her attachment to Greece remains strong, and the country is the inspiration for much of her writing. She now lives in the Derbyshire Peak District. She is the author of six Mysteries of the Greek Detective: The Messenger of Athens (shortlisted for the ITV3 Crime Thriller Award for Breakthrough Authors and longlisted for the Desmond Elliot Prize), The Taint of Midas, The Doctor of Thessaly, The Lady of Sorrows, The Whispers of Nemesis and The Bull of Mithros.

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    Reviews for The Taint of Midas

    4/5

    49 ratings12 reviews

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    • 4/5
      If you want to be whisked away to a Greek island and the summer sunshine, you could do a lot worse than spend your time with Hermes Diaktoros, the fat but gentle sleuth from Athens.
    • 4/5
      I recently reviewed the first volume in this series (The Messenger of Athens) and said that I would read this one, just to see if I can figure out what is going on. I have decided to read the rest of the series (which I don't believe is complete), because I am enjoying what the author is doing. As I said in the previous review, I'm not 100% sure this is a mystery, but it's an enjoyable book.Hermes Diaktoros, the Fat Man, comes to his vacation home after several years away, and discovers the body of his old friend by the side of the road. The old man leads a simple, old-fashioned life up by the Temple of Apollo, growing melons, grapes, and olives, and tending bees. His land is dry, and gives him a meager living, but the view would be worth millions to someone who could market it to the flocks of tourists.Hermes seems to know from the beginning who is guilty, and as he wanders about, having gentle conversations, he pulls out of the villagers what virtues and vices were already there. Somehow, after talking with him, they seem exposed, and rewards and punishments come to them.At no point is it clear what Hermes does, and again, he seems to have connections with thoe old ways, and the old gods that are not fully articulated, but hover beneath the surface. Most of the book is written to touch on these issues, and on the alleged mystery, only obliquely, while drawing a rich portraint of life in a small Greek village. I don't know if this is an accurate portrayal, but it has versimilitude, and that makes the books worth reading.
    • 5/5
      Elegant and delightful!
    • 4/5
      I enjoyed this for, but not quite as much as the first in the series. Once again Zouroudi seems to create the atmosphere of the Greek Islands and how things have changed since the advent of tourism. But, unlike the first novel, there is very little of the conventions of the detective novel as the story highlights the almost supernatural insight of of Hermes Diaktoros as he looks into the death of his friend, Gabrilis - he seems to know exactly who and why committed the murder right from the start, leading the local police to form the same conclusion. In the meantime he looks into local corruption and greed, which may or may not be connected with the murder of his friend. .
    • 5/5
      (Fiction, Mystery, Series #2)I wasn’t sure what to expect of my first meeting with Hermes Diaktoros, but I was eager to make his acquaintance so when Netgalley offered these first three in the series, I jumped.The series is set in Greece at an undetermined time – but in very real settings that make little or no use of modern technology. That could be mid-20th century, or it could be present day in an isolated rural area that is not up to date. To further confuse things, Hermes’ methods are very old-fashioned and a little bit unorthodox, and there is the tiniest bit of magical realism.This series has everything: a setting that the reader longs to be part of, a likeable inscrutable protagonist, and good mysteries. There are seven books in this series, each dealing with one of the traditional seven deadly sins.All of these books were excellent, although it is the story in the third one that has stayed with me three years later. There’s always justice in Zouroudi’s books although not always in the form you might expect.I’m glad to be reminded to return to this series.4½ stars
    • 3/5
      Ohhh... I didn't realize, reading the first in this series (Messenger of Athens) that this is a 'Seven Deadly Sins' series. The previous book focused on 'Lust' - this one is 'Greed.'

      Greed, as it so often does, comes in the form of a rapacious developer, who will stop at nothing to acquire a prime spot of land, on which he wishes to build retirement villas for wealthy foreigners.

      Sadly, the owner of this plot of land, an elderly beekeeper, has recently been killed in a vicious hit-and-run. The body was found by his long-time friend, the enigmatic investigator Hermes Diaktoros, who will implacably pursue justice for his death.

      Along the way, he will encounter corruption, selfishness and venality - but also moments of generosity and honesty.

      The setting here is on the mainland, rather than a small island, and it feels much more contemporary - definitely present day, with mentions of technology and modern architecture.

      Overall, this is not nearly as dark a book as the first one. I'm not sure it's quite as good, objectively, but it's less disturbing. Not everyone is as awful and/or hopeless a person in this book as we saw in the prior installment. The reader remains fairly confident throughout that justice will, eventually, be done. Hermes' justice is quite harsh - but satisfying and appropriate. The reader gets a few more glimpses of Hermes - but who and what he really is remains a mystery.

      I'd definitely like to continue with this series.

      (Copy provided by NetGalley)
    • 4/5
      I've been going through my to-be-read shelves and finding the next books in series that I've started and unintentionally abandoned. This second book in Anne Zouroudi's Seven Deadly Sins series set in Greece certainly fits that criteria. The first book, The Messenger of Athens, introduced me to Hermes Diaktoros, who is far from being your usual detective. Someone has described him as "half Poirot, half deus ex machina," and it's true. He's a character to enjoy, from the way he investigates crimes to keeping those white shoes of his absolutely spotless to finding out the next thing he's going to pull out of his bag of tricks. Hermes also waxes philosophical at times: "He was considering the tangled threads of life; why was it sometimes so, he thought, that the righting of a wrong did not settle the scales, but created only crueler injustices?" This is something I've pondered in many of the mysteries I've read.The mystery has two main threads: the primary one being who killed Gabrilis Kaloyeros, which is intertwined nicely with the story of two policemen, the veteran Gazis and the rookie Petridis. This cozy-with-a-twist not only gives readers an intriguing main character and a strong mystery to solve but it also gives a real feel for Greece-- the changes being made to lure the tourist dollar as well as how ancient myths can intersect with contemporary life.This is definitely a series that I should not have neglected. I'm looking forward to following Hermes Diaktoros to his next case.
    • 4/5
      Second in the delightful, highly recommended Hermes Diaktoros "Seven sins" series of mysteries. The theme of each novel in this series concerns a certain sin: in this one, Greed. This was a gentle mystery. Hermes' good friend of many years, Gabrilis, farms a rocky and nearly worthless plot of land and keeps bees near an old Temple of Apollo. Gabrilis is killed by a hit-and-run driver, while taking watermelons to market. Hermes finds his body lying near the road and after the police arrive, becomes a suspect. An unscrupulous land developer and his two sons are interested in Gabrilis' land and have tricked him into signing it away to them. Hermes wants to find the killer, and deal with other unsavory characters: a zealous radio reporter and the shady land speculators. Many characters, including a young rookie policeman, deal with Greed in their own ways. All ends on a high note. Our unorthodox detective, Hermes, appears out of nowhere, then after resolution, disappears for parts unknown. We're never really sure of his true identity: from oblique clues, is he possibly the god Hermes in disguise, or just as he appears: a fat man in glasses, obsessive about his white canvas tennis shoes? For all that, he's an astute, avuncular, and endearing figure. He also dispenses wisdom and common sense as needed. The remaining cast of characters is colorful. The setting took me right to the blue skies and sun of island Greece.
    • 4/5
      Set on the remote Greek island of Thiminos, Zouroudi has created a mystery that includes my favorite things--an interesting location, interesting characters, and a good plot. When an elderly local beekeeper dies, his body is discovered by an old friend, Hermes, who seems to have mythical powers to help the local police solve the case. Zouroudi's descriptions of this fat man who loves his snow white tennis shoes as well as her descriptions of the other characters make this a book I want to follow by reading the others in the series. (Net Galley ARC)
    • 4/5
      Greed and avarice run rampant in this story with its parallel to the story of King Midas. The traditional way of living upon the island is driven beneath the wheels of greed in pursuit of tourist dollars. One man's death triggers a series of investigations.
    • 5/5
      For a synopsis, see elsewhere; I want merely to reassure readers that the fat man is back, in all his glory, and this time it's personal. The bad end badly, the good (what few of them there are) end well - just as it should be. Anne Zouroudi paints a powerful picture of the gnawing miasma that is avarice, poisoning all about it. Only the Greek detective can bring an end to the present trouble in paradise.
    • 5/5
      Book Review by Linda S. Brown4/4/2011The Taint of MidasAnne ZouroudiReagan Arthur /July 20, 2011I missed Zouroudi’s first book in the Seven Deadly Sins series, THE MESSENGER OF ATHENS, but savored this second book, THE TAINT OF MIDAS. It has a deliciously slow, sunbaked, dusty pace: slightly melancholy, slightly drowsy, but sharpened by the dry humor of its protagonist, and by the hidden secrets and tensions of a small village on a small Greek island being overtaken by progress, and the village barber who knows more than he says…Hermes Diaktoros – or “The Fat Man,” as he is known to the locals — returns after several years away to his vacation home in Palea Chora to find an old friend dead by the roadside, an apparent hit-and-run. But Hermes doesn’t believe it was an accident and, in his deceptively mild, bespectacled manner, sets out to discover what really happened. Hermes’ friend was a simple man with a simple life; he was a farmer with some olive trees, grape vines and bee hives. The Fat Man knows an innocent person would not have just left the old man for dead by the roadside, his bicycle in ruins, his faded old cap in the shrubs. So who in this village would?The Fat Man loves his food and his comforts. The author sets the atmosphere so well you feel the hot sun and taste the cold beer, the cured olives and the calamari. You feel the crisp linen of the shirt as Hermes slips it on after a swim in the sea. Just as The Fat Man does, you hear the mildly irritating background buzz of an increasing number of obnoxious tourists. Small town gossip – naturally including The Fat Man’s new friend, the town’s barber – leads Hermes to investigate the burgeoning development that stirs up dust and dissension in this sleepy, idyllic fishing village.The Fat Man is almost apologetic, but incisive in his investigation. He has no professional standing in the village, and no one knows what he does when he is elsewhere. Somehow, however, Hermes manages to uncover far more secrets than do the local police -- not only in the suspicious death of his friend, but also in the questionable real estate dealings of the local mogul and his two sons (one a respected lawyer, the other a thug).THE TAINT OF MIDAS harks back to Christianna Brand’s Inspector Cockrill series, in the late 1940s. Brand’s “Cocky” was much more sprightly than Zouroudi’s Fat Man, but the books share a similar fond attachment to the village life and a perspective that is not-quite outsider/not-quite insider.This is the book to take to the hammock with a cold beer or glass of lemonade. This is the book to take on a trip, on a cruise, or to your own backyard or armchair. The Fat Man is a quietly amusing companion, yet a formidable opponent with whom to match wits.