Tuesday, September 10, 2013

"Mykonos After Midnight"

The New York Times praised Jeffrey Siger's work as “thoughtful police procedurals set in picturesque but not untroubled Greek locales,” the Greek press described him as “prophetic,” and Eurocrime called him a “very gifted American author...on a par with other American authors such as Joseph Wambaugh or Ed McBain.” Mykonos After Midnight is the fifth novel in his Chief Inspector Andreas Kaldis series, following up on his internationally best-selling Murder in Mykonos, Assassins of Athens, Prey on Patmos: An Aegean Prophecy, and Target: Tinos. Born in Pittsburgh, Siger practiced law at a major Wall Street law firm and established his own New York City law firm before giving it all up to live and write on the island of Mykonos.

Siger applied the Page 69 Test to Mykonos After Midnight and reported the following:
From page 69:
in the most flattering of ways, and making sure to refer back to other things he'd said in other conversations.

Three months of this led to a weekend away together. Three more weekends led to a marriage proposal. She told him there was no way her captors would let her go. He told her not to worry.

The wedding was private but her captors attended, smiling as if they'd been family. She had escaped. She was free.

He was a kind man. He encouraged her to learn. She went to school, and she graduated. She attended college. Never did she look at another man. She was committed to her husband and their two children. Yes, she'd become the mother of two beautiful sons.

Teacher closed her eyes and pressed her fingertips against them.

Vladimir. And his rambunctious, mischievous brother.

She pressed harder.

My lovely Sergey.

She was in a class when they came to her home. Her husband had many enemies. These cut his throat, severed his genitals, and stuck them in his mouth. They did the same to her two beautiful boys. She did not know who did it. It could have been any of many.

She found them when she came home. She sat among them only for minutes, then packed her bag and left. There was nothing more she could do for them. She did not attend their funerals, for by then she was no longer in that city or that country.

She fled to lose herself, leaving behind all her papers and whatever else she thought could be used to trace her.

She became a nameless refugee in a foreign land. And, in time, experienced a revolutionary new emotion. Freedom. She no longer feared death, and with that discovered liberty, took absolute control over her life for the very first time.

She dropped her hands to her lap and looked again at the photograph.
Publishers Weekly wrote of Mykonos After Midnight, “The emergence of a shadowy master criminal bodes well for future adventures,” and page 69 captures the essence of what created that master criminal—hope, brutally destroyed, turned to ruthlessness.

In Chief Inspector Andreas Kaldis’ fifth of “Siger’s thoughtful police procedurals set in picturesque but not untroubled Greek locales” (the New York Times on Target: Tinos), the murder of a legendary nightclub owner who helped transform Mykonos from an impoverished Greek island into a wealthy, world renown tourist paradise puts politically explosive secrets into play and Kaldis into battle with a powerful, clandestine international force intent on doing whatever necessary to wrest control away from those who’ve dominated the island for generations.

Mykonos After Midnight springs to life against the backdrop of a society rooted in the past, struggling through times of dire economic crises to catch up with the present, yet “reads more like an Elmore Leonard caper than a whodunit (Kirkus Reviews).”
Learn more about the book and author at Jeffrey Siger's website.

The Page 69 Test: Murder in Mykonos.

The Page 69 Test: Prey on Patmos.

The Page 69 Test: Target Tinos.

--Marshal Zeringue