"Death On Delos"

Gary Corby is the author of the Athenian Mystery series, starring Nicolaos, his girlfriend Diotima, and his irritating twelve year old brother Socrates.

The author lives in Sydney, Australia, with his wife, two daughters, two ducks, two budgerigars, and a brush turkey that is almost as irritating as Socrates.

Corby applied the Page 69 Test to the latest book in the Athenian Mystery series, Death on Delos, and reported the following:

I always enjoy this challenge, because I'm very firmly of the view that every page must add something to a story. Every time I'm asked to do one of these I immediately worry about what's on page 69. One of these days I'm going to write a book that is specifically engineered to have something weird and wonderful on page 69.

My latest, seventh(!) book of the Athenian Mysteries is called Death On Delos. Delos was the holy isle of the ancient Greeks. It was the birthplace of two gods: Apollo the Sun God and Artemis the Huntress. A strange but true fact is that in ancient times it was illegal to either die or be born upon Delos. Which makes it all the more tricky when a pregnant Diotima, my heroine and the detective of our tale, arrives and is required to solve a murder.

Page 69 sees Diotima start work. The revelation that his wife has been assigned to the case comes to my hero Nico on the page before. He has no problems with that. What disturbs him slightly more is discovering that he's the prime suspect.

"Of course, I’ll have to interview you first,” said my wife. “You’re the prime suspect.”

“Me?” I said, horrified. “I expected that sort of response from Anaxinos, but not from my own wife.”

“Well, you were the one standing over the victim’s body,” she pointed out. “Face it, Nico, if you were in my position, you’d be insisting that you did it, and demanding that we learn more about your dubious past.”

“I like to think you’re already familiar with my dubious past,” I said bitterly. “You contributed to a lot of it.”

So I had a lot of fun with this! Diotima is on her way as the lead detective, with an inordinate number of disasters, revelations, twists, turns and brilliant deductions to get them to the end.

Visit Gary Corby's website.

My Book, The Movie: Death on Delos.

--Marshal Zeringue