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An Athenian Mystery
by Gary Corby
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 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 fall short 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 Nico and Diotima dig into the actor's past, they discover all was not as it seemed. There are enough suspects to fill a theater. As the festival approaches and pressure mounts on all sides, can they hunt down the killer in time? Or will they simply have to hope for a deus ex machina?
"Starred Review. Corby again manages to effortlessly integrate laugh-out-loud humor into a fairly clued puzzle. " - Publishers Weekly
"Starred Review. This fifth mystery in the series moves from shock to shock, each one amplified by the fact that every prank and accident is painted on the scenery wall onstage almost immediately afterward. Corby is adept at delineating ancient Greece without sounding professorial. This works on every level." - Booklist
"Peppered with fascinating details about theater history and the Hellenic origins of theatrical lore, Corby's sixth series outing (after The Marathon Conspiracy ) will please fans of mysteries set in ancient Greece, especially those written by Anna Apostolou and Marilyn Todd." - Library Journal
This information about Death Ex Machina was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Gary Corby was born in 1963, and is an Australian author of historical mysteries set in the world of Classical Greece.
Long been fascinated by ancient history, finding it more exciting and bizarre than any modern thriller, Corby combines the ancient world with his love of whodunits to create an historical mystery series set in classical Greece. His novels feature historical men and women from the time as recurring characters, notably Socrates, Pericles, and the priestess Diotima of Mantinea.
Gary lives in Sydney, Australia, with his wife and two daughters. He blogs at A Dead Man Fell from the Sky, on all things ancient, Athenian, and mysterious.
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