A corrosive collision of cultures, the gregarious Scot and the family obsessed Greek combine to fascinating effect in the main character Alex Mavros. There you have it! The Scottish first name and Greek surname! Alex struggles to find his place in the world being neither fully Scottish nor Greek, but a confusing (for him) mixture of both. Added to which he has a life long 'burden' to carry, the mysterious loss of his brother years ago, plus a strong, successful mother and an independent, irratatingly successful sister, oh and an on/off relationship with a possible girlfriend!This is an intreaguing intertwining of three disparate stories, a Second World War love story, a missing person and the mysterious local woman with a tragic past. These three strands are slowly wound together into a strong and fascinating cord of discourse and upheaval involving a fascinating cast of characters. The local, wealthy landowner; his wastrel, elemental son; an ageing club singer/drug addicted wife; a typical hotch potch of tourist/foreign settlers and a strong scintillating cast of local Greek locals on a small island off Paros.Paul Johnston has a vivid, detailed and gory imagination (you know this if you have read his Matt Wells series!) and it surfaces in parts in this story, gaining a stronger foothold as it unfolds, which is an interesting counterpoint to the ostensibly idyllic setting of the small Greek island of Trigono. However, the idyll of the small Greek island is shattered early on and we soon realise that it is just like any 'small town' the world over, full of hateful, small minded, ignorant people, who gang up against the 'outsider', the one amongst them who is destined to be different. A wholly engrossing and captivating story of cultural differences and norrow minded local internecine factions set against an historical background of Ancient Greecian artefacts and more recent history as told by the Second World War story. I would recommend this book to those of you who like a well paced, multi charactered, inter racial, humanly flawed tale of simple love and outlandish greed with (perhaps surprisingly!) an amount of lesbianism!
