Deadline in Athens - Review

I enjoy books that give a different persective and let me "travel" to new locations. Deadline in Athens did just that.

I had to rethink the way I went into this book; U.S. standards didn't apply. Told in first person, Haritos reflects on page 4: "...who has time to worry about Albanians? If they'd killed a Greek, one of ours...that would be different. But they could do what they liked to each other. It was enough that we provided ambulances to take them away." Actually, the prejudices and reactions presented aren't a lot different from what can be found in police departments in this country. Here, however, in books it's usually a secondary character that is blatant with hostility while the protagonist tsk tsks and attempts to make up for the other's lack of PC.

Not so with Deadline in Athens. In this book, all the characters are very up front with their prejudices; there are also instances of what could be called police brutality but is taken for granted in this Athens atmosphere. This police behavior is also explained a bit, as Haritos thinks back to his days with the military police--to the revolutions just two decades removed within the country--to the different political structure of Greece compared to the States.

But about Inspector Haritos. Putting aside the honest representation of his prejudices, why did he have to emotionally and verbally abuse his wife? By the end of the book, it seems it was part of the roles they played in their marriage, but it nagged at me.

Will this domestic glitch be enough to keep me from reading another Inspector Haritos mystery? Definitely not. Too well written, too unique a story line for me to pass up a title because of My prejudices.