The Wednesday W.Ink offers a glimpse of Digging into Death, a post-WW I mystery set on the island of Crete.
Chapter 1 :: Saturday, October 4, 1919
If ever a maiden needed a hero, Isabella did.
Crete was the famed birthplace of Zeus, the god who granted supplicants’ prayers. Standing on the steps of the Heraklion Hotel, Isabella hoped her hero appeared before a blood sacrifice was necessary.
She plunked down her suitcase on the hotel steps and fanned her wide-brimmed straw hat. In ancient Crete the rulers had offered shelter and protection to strangers. Yet in the closed faces of the passers-by, intent on their errands, she did not see any hospitality offered to a foreign woman alone. She needed a recognizable and friendly face. She didn’t see one.
Men talking, engines sputtering, horns blaring, dogs barking, donkeys braying: after the hotel’s quiet, the cacophony assaulted her ears. Men poured past the steps with scarcely a glance at her. Most wore the dark Cretan jacket and loose breeches, although a few suits testified to modern Europe’s inroads on island culture. A few women in unrelieved black walked along the dusty road, but they ignored the lone foreigner on the hotel steps.
Isabella saw no one familiar and definitely no one who looked like the reincarnation of a protective god and certainly no one who could rescue a stranded governess.
sausages, pried open windows to climb into dark rooms, and stolen locked boxes with stashes of coins. He never knew who Mattias worked for. Belly stuffed with iced rolls or spiced sausage, he had trailed behind his brother. Until the gendarmes caught Mat with a hand stuck in the alms box.