The Noontide Sun

by Deirdre Chapman

An Aegean island in summer. A driver pulls into a garden to answer his phone. Hidden among the olive trees Anna is listening as a slightly familiar voice delivers an order to kill. Shelving her pursuit of the Greek idyll she is drawn into a sequence of events and encounters which lead her, by way of rogue icons and wayward antiquities, to other islands, before returning her to her own deep past on this one, the start, and still the source, of everything. Rich in the atmosphere of contemporary Greek island life, Deirdre Chapman's tense literary thriller is a must read this summer.

390 pages, Paperback

First published May 2, 2014

About the author

Stitching together an author profile on the terrace of my garden on the Greek island where the opening scene of The Noontide Sun is set I have to start at the end - the past few years during which my sons and I have planted a garden in our favourite place, the island of Paros, many of whose locations have been borrowed for my fictional island of Kryptos.

The intensity of the blue and white island-scape of the Cyclades has seduced many writers, most notably Lawrence Durrell, as it does those who fetch up here for a few weeks in the sun and find themselves experiencing so much more. So it was with my husband and me and our first two sons when we fetched up here in 1969. We returned as often as we could, adding a third son along the way, and now our grandchildren love the island as much as their fathers did.

I was born in the small seaside and links golf course town of Carnoustie in the east of Scotland and became a journalist in Glasgow where I met my husband, also a journalist, and we raised our sons. It is still my home for the greater part of the year.

My father-in-law was a poet who spearheaded the Scottish literary renaissance as well as the stirring of Scottish identity that has led to the current separation debate, and my husband was heavily involved in the politics of the movement.

My literary references were quite different. I loved the oblique style of earlier British women writers, in particular Muriel Spark, but before her Rose Macaulay, Sylvia Townsend Warner, Stella Gibbon and Elizabeth Taylor. Early John Updike, particularly the short stories, Philip Roth, Anne Tyler and Donna Tartt are all favourites. For atmosphere – the tug of place on a susceptible mind, in the case of his Border Trilogy, Mexico – I have a huge admiration for Cormac McCarthy. Perhaps my single favourite book is Ian McEwen’s Saturday which I find close to perfect.

In The Noontide Sun I have sought to capture the spell that the Greek island landscape casts on its visitors as the background to a literary thriller that I hope will make page-turning and evocative holiday reading.

Reviews

[Moray · Rating 4 out of 5]

In some ways reminiscent of Robert Goddard's Into The Blue - a small Greek island, mysteries woven around the people there, murder, greed and complexity. But what sets this apart is that it is written with the driest of wit, and it is very witty, from the point of view of an intelligent woman who would really rather not be involved at all. Imagine a young Dorothy Parker pushed into the role of detective, and there is the joy of this book. Read it as a page-turning murder mystery, or as a wry commentary of expat life on a small Greek holiday island as it tries to compete with the concrete holiday complexes of Santorini. This book's waspish humour made me laugh, and often stopped me in my tracks while I considered some very well written passages.

[Louisa Grieve · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful story, beautifully written