The Lady of Sorrows: A Seven Deadly Sins Mystery

Zouroudi’s engaging fourth Deadly Sins mystery (after 2012’s The Doctor of Thessaly) takes Greek investigator Hermes Diaktoros, who belongs to no police force and whose concerns are “not with the enforcement of written laws, but with the administration of justice,” to Kalkos, where he visits the island’s miraculous icon, the Lady of Sorrows, and finds several oddities revolving around it and those responsible for its care. When Diaktoros suspects that the icon he sees in the church is not the original, his lover, art expert Kara Athanit, concurs. Add in Diaktoros’s suspicions about the death of aging fisherman and icon painter Sotiris; a theft of peaches by Pavlos, a gypsy; and a long-buried secret torturing bitter, crippled Nassia and her son, Agiris, and her daughter, Sambeca. With compassion and wisdom, Diaktoros resolves the various puzzles without invoking any laws. Diaktoros embodies a delightful combination of lusty appetites and thirst for justice. (Mar.)