A Darker God Barbara Cleverly by Barbara Cleverly 9780440339052, 0440339057 instant download after payment.

Award-winning author Barbara Cleverly returns with this spellbinding new mystery featuring aspiring archaeologist Laetitia Talbot. In Athens in 1928, Letty begins a perilous race to unearth a plot steeped in betrayal, seething with retribution, and about to explode in a wave of lethal violence.

In the open-air theatre of the dark god Dionysos, Letty watches a performance of an ancient Greek tragedy. But the revenge that is exacted onstage, the dagger that is wielded, and the blood that flows in full view of the audience are not theatrical effects. As Letty digs for clues, she unearths disturbing secrets and dark animosities with catastrophic implications worthy of a Sophocles—but of far more recent vintage.

Now, as a killer cuts a merciless swath across a country in the throes of political instability, Letty herself steps unawares into the murderer’s savage spotlight—a light so bright she may not be able to see the dark figure behind it until it’s too late.

*From the Trade Paperback edition.*

### From Publishers Weekly

Set in 1928, Cleverly's third Laetitia Talbot mystery (after 2008's *Bright Hair About the Bone*) offers a cleverer puzzle than its predecessors, but fails to measure up to her Joe Sandilands historical series (*Folly du Jour*, etc.). In Athens, the stabbed body of Sir Andrew Merriman turns up during a rehearsal of an English production of Aeschylus' *Agamemnon*. Merriman, a classics scholar, was about to finish writing a biography of Alexander the Great that would answer two burning questions about the conqueror—the identity of his murderer and the location of his tomb. Fortuitously, Det. Chief Insp. Percy Montacute of Scotland Yard, who recently has been [s]econded to Athens as a CID officer, is a member of the play's cast. Aided by archeologist Talbot, Montacute investigates. Talbot, who had an affair with Merriman, is a less memorable lead than such other female sleuths of the same period as Maisie Dobbs and Phryne Fisher. *(Apr.)*
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### From Booklist

Post–World War I politics and ancient mysteries mix well together in this third in Cleverly’s series starring Laetitia “Letty” Talbot (following Bright Hair About the Bone, 2008). It’s 1928, and British archaeologist and amateur sleuth Letty has recently returned to Athens from a dig in Crete when her friend, mentor, and former lover Andrew Merriman is murdered, his stabbed body found during a rehearsal of Agamennon, which he translated from Aeschylus. The next day his sharp-tongued wife, Maud, who knew of her husband’s dalliances, also dies, presumably pushed from her home’s second-floor window, casting suspicion on actress Thetis Templeton, Maud’s visiting cousin and Andrew’s current lover. DCI Percy Montacute from Scotland Yard, an amateur actor newly posted to Athens, is present when Andrew’s body is discovered and heads the investigation, aided by Letty. In addition to bringing deductive reasoning to the case, Letty becomes an endangered player in a long-planned plot for revenge by a victim of the 1923 Greece and Turkey population exchange. A complex, well-plotted historical mystery enlivened by its feisty and more-than-modern protagonist. --Michele Leber