Prey on Patmos

Andreas Kaldis #3

by Jeffrey Siger

"[A] suspenseful trip through the rarely seen darker strata of complex, contemporary Greece." —Publishers Weekly

Saint John wrote the apocalyptic Book of Revelation over 1900 years ago in a cave on Greece's eastern Aegean island of Patmos. Today, on the pristine Aegean peninsula of Mount Athos, isolated from the rest of humanity, twenty monasteries sit protecting the secrets of Byzantium amid a way of life virtually unchanged for more than 1500 years.

When a revered monk from that holy island's thousand-year-old monastery is murdered in Patmos' town square during Easter Week, Chief Inspector Andreas Kaldis of Greece's twenty-first century Special Crimes Division is called upon to find the killer before all hell breaks loose.

Andreas' impolitic search for answers brings him face-to-face with a scandal haunting the world's oldest surviving monastic community. He finds that this ancient and sacred refuge harbors some very modern international intrigues that threaten to destroy the very heart of the Church.

Genres: Mystery, Greece, Fiction, Thriller, Crime, Procedural, 21st Century

252 pages, Kindle Edition

First published December 1, 2010

About the author

I am an American living on the Aegean Greek island of Mykonos. A Pittsburgh native and former Wall Street lawyer, I gave up my career as a name partner in my own New York City law firm to write mystery thrillers that tell more than just a fast-paced story. My novels are aimed at exploring serious societal issues confronting modern day Greece in a tell-it-like-it-is style while touching upon the country's ancient roots.

Some Mykonian friends told me if I started sprinkling murders with a message across my adopted country's tourist paradises, I'd likely be banished, if not hung. No one was more amazed than I when my debut novel, Murder in Mykonos (a sort of Mamma Mia setting for a No Country for Old Men story), became Greece's #1 best selling English-language novel (and a best-seller in Greek, as well).

As of September 2016 I have eight Chief Inspector Andreas Kaldis novels out there and receive no more than the customary number of death threats. I'm diligently trying to improve my percentage in that regard with posts about Greece each Saturday on the Murder is Everywhere blogsite I share with nine renowned mystery writers from around the world.

It's been a remarkable journey, punctuated most notably by The New York Times selecting the fourth in my Andreas Kaldis series (Target: Tinos) as one of its five "picks for the beach" while calling the entire series, "thoughtful police procedurals set in picturesque but not untroubled Greek locales;" Left Coast Crime's nomination of the fifth in the series (Mykonos After Midnight) in 2014 as Best Mystery in a Foreign Setting; a 2016 Barry Award Best Novel Nomination for my seventh in the series (Devil of Delphi); starred reviews and official government citations; and this quote from Fodor's Greek Islands Travel Guide under a section titled "Mykonos After Dark," which colleagues say I should consider the equivalent of winning an Oscar: "Some say that after midnight, Mykonos is all nightlife—this throbbing beat is the backdrop to Jeffrey Siger's popular mystery, Murder in Mykonos."

My work is published in the US, UK, Germany (German), and Greece (Greek and English), and I'm honored to have served as Chair of the National Board of Bouchercon, the world's largest mystery convention, and as Adjunct Professor of English at Washington & Jefferson College, teaching mystery writing.