In the category of guilty pleasures, I happily place mysteries set in interesting historical settings. I recently picked up The Tomb of Zeus (2007), the first of Barbara Cleverly’s series set in Europe after World War I, featuring Laetitia Talbot, an independent young woman of means with a penchant for archaeology and mysteries. If you enjoy the conventions of the upper class British mystery and archaeological digs, you’ll have fun with this one.
For the sake of suspense, Cleverly sometimes holds back information in ways that push credulity a bit, given that some of the key pieces were always in the mind of Laetitia, the narrator who has been sharing her other inner contemplations with us. The technique does, however, keep us turning pages. The interesting window into archaeology circa 1928 makes one glad the site Laetitia is digging up is fictional and no real history is being destroyed, although working a real dig would certainly be more fun if treasures popped up at such a rapid rate.
Cleverly’s female sleuth faces many obstacles in her male dominated world, but her own fortune and good education provide her mobility and a degree of power. Her willingness to stand up to men who try to intimidate her makes for satisfying reading.
The setting on the island of Crete is lovely. We see the small villages, craggy mountains, and Minoan ruins in vivid and accurate detail. The traditional way of life is entirely believable, extreme as it may seem to some. Even when I traveled there in the late 1970’s the men in Cretan villages expressed wonder at my traveling companion, a single Greek woman in her twenties. They told her that if their daughters traveled from the village without chaperone, they would be disgraced because what besides sinful activities could draw a woman from her home and family? I, as an American, was clearly a lost woman with no chance of redemption, but a Greek woman—they had to try. She was from Thessalonica, a large modern city, working as a teacher and quite independent. She found their concern quaint, but foreign. It would be fun to return to Crete and see how much the twenty-first century has transformed it. I suspect it is entirely different, but I hope the peaches are still as sweet.