Dark deeds and a bloody ritual

The Athenian Murders is an historical detective novel, but a very unusual one. Set in Athens at the time of Plato, it begins with the discovery of the mangled body of a young man, Tramachus, on the slopes of Mount Lycabettus, apparently killed by a pack of wolves.

Diagoras, Tramachus's tutor at the academy, distraught with grief at the death of his pupil, asks Heracles Pontor, known as the Decipherer of Enigmas, to look into the last days of the youth's life. Heracles, intrigued by the state of the corpse, agrees: his investigations lead him into a dark world of bloody ritual, where ancient myths come to life, hidden beneath the civilised surface of Athens.

Intriguing as this plot is, it is only one level of the narration. It purports to be the work of one of Plato's circle; the manuscript, discovered only recently, is now in the hands of a translator who, as he works on it, adds his comments in a series of ever longer footnotes. He is convinced that the story contains a hidden meaning which he, another Decipherer of Enigmas, is determined to elucidate.

And, as his version progresses, the events in the story come to bear a hallucinatory resemblance to the events of his own life.

Though The Athenian Murders perhaps might not, as the cover suggests, bear comparison with The Name of the Rose, it is none the less an extremely subtle and intelligent work which is, at the same time, totally absorbing.

José Carlos Somoza is a Cuban, now living in Spain; this is his sixth novel. If the others are as good as this, they should be translated immediately.