The Meaning of Friday

Inexplicably, Dr Michael Moralis, a scholar of Mycenaean Greece from New York, has just been murdered in his hotel room on the beautiful and crime-free island of Naxos in the Cyclades.

Archaeologist Martin Day already had plans for the summer. He owns a house on Naxos where he writes and researches, and is about to start work on a biography of local historian Nikos Elias, who for the last years of his life had a single obsession: to find a Mycenaean tomb which he was convinced still lay undiscovered on Naxos. Day's friend Helen Aitchison arrives to stay with him for a few months to work on her latest novel and avoid thinking about her former disastrous marriage. Neither Day nor Helen anticipates the newspaper article from which they learn of Moralis's death.

The local police are relieved when Day offers some insights into the dead scholar, but have little evidence until they are joined by a senior man from the Athens force. The unconventional Inspector Andreas Nomikos believes the murder is linked to some antiquities smugglers he has tracked to the Cyclades, and plans to use Day, with his international contacts in the world of archaeology, to help him prove it. Day has his own ideas. It looks to him like Moralis had other reasons entirely for being on Naxos, involving people whom the police have not yet considered.

Day loves a good intellectual challenge, such as Nikos Elias's obscure tomb theories and Michael Moralis's puzzling murder. He loves his platonic friendship with Helen, and all the delightful food and drink that Greece has to offer. He may even be slightly in love with the unobtainable Deppi Kiloziglou. However, when he and Helen find the body of a young man in a stone hut in the hills, Day puts his easy life on hold until he has resolved the mystery in his own maverick way.

It turns out he's rather good at it, although his approach is not without risk.