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An Oxford Classics graduate, J M Alvey, is penning a murder mystery series set in ancient Athens for Orion.
Craig Lye, assistant editor at Weidenfeld & Nicolson, bought world all language rights from Max Edwards, then at Rogers, Coleridge and White, now of Mulcahy Associates, for Shadows of Athens and a further novel. The books will be published by Orion in March 2019 and September 2019 respectively in paperback original, e-book and audio formats.
The series follows Philocles the playwright, who in the first book discovers a murdered man outside his front door in Athens mere days before his play is performed at the Dionysia festival.
Lye said: “J M Alvey has penned a relentless and intriguing crime investigation that pulls the reader right into the fast-beating heart of ancient Athens. From the cut-throat opening, the pace never relents as Philocles realises he has stumbled (literally) into something he wishes he hadn’t. Fans of Steven Saylor’s Gordianus the Finder and Lindsey Davis’s Falvia Alba and Marcus Didius Falco, will love Philocles the playwright – the new sleuth on the scene – exposing the dark underbelly of the ancient world. You have been warned: the shadows of Athens are a dangerous place to linger...”
Alvey said: “Classical Greece fascinates me because people’s everyday concerns about life and politics were the same as ours, as we see from their dramas and histories. Between the Persian and Peloponnesian Wars, Athenian democracy faced down the threats of rich men’s self-interest and would-be oligarchs’ ruthless plots. Yet their world was so very different in so many ways. There was no police force, no detectives, no public prosecutors. The challenge I’ve set myself and Philocles is seeing justice done regardless. It’s great to find a publisher whose passion for these stories equals my own, and I’m thrilled to be working with Craig Lye and Orion.”