Road to Omalos

by: Marilyn Jax

Published by: Beaver's Pond Press

Reviewed by Beth Cummings

This mystery novel by the six-time national award winning writer of The Find, is also a travelogue on visiting the Greek island of Crete. Private detectives, Claire Caswell and Guy Lombard travel to this picturesque and historically important destination in search of a suspect in a Miami crime. Jax gives the reader detailed descriptions of both of the largest cities on Crete - Hania and the capital, Heraklion, as well as the landscape between them.

The criminal they are pursuing, George Zenonakis is famously evil and in his home country, no one wants to either cross him or even talk about him. This makes Caswell and Lombard's investigation a bit daunting.

They are not the only people searching for Zenonakis. In a side plot, a team of vigilante businessmen are also traveling in Crete with the intent to exact retribution on a criminal who has so far escaped incarceration.

The characters in this mystery are interesting, but it is actually the place that really stands out. Crete has Greek history and myth attached to so many of its sites and ruins and Marilyn Jax supplies information on several . A Minoan ruin is particularly fascinating as the home of the Labyrinth myth.

My copy of this book is an uncorrected bound galley, so I expect that some of the problems I saw in the first part of the book will be corrected by editing before final publication. That being said, I still felt that the first third of the book had an overabundance of adjectives. None the less, I expect that fans of her first book will also enjoy this one.