Although historical detective stories are now a flourishing genre, with Steven Saylor and Lindsey Davis being particularly prominent in the field of detective stories set in classical antiquity, back in 1978, when Aristotle Detective was first published, Margaret Doody was something of a pioneer in the genre. Recently she has added four more to the series featuring Aristotle as a 4th Century B.C. detective.
Clipart.comAristotle Detective is set in Athens at the time when Alexander the Great and the Macedonians were fighting against the Persians. It tells the story of Stephanos, a young man whose father had died recently. Stephanos does have a cousin, Philemon, but he is in exile for manslaughter in a tavern brawl. Stephanos happens to be passing a house when the body of a murdered man is discovered inside. To Stephanos' horror,
Philemon is named as the murderer at the dead man's funeral.
The following spring, a plot is launched at the end of the Anthesteria festival. Anthia, heiress to the late Pherekrates’ fortune, disappears from her uncle’s house. Has she been abducted by someone hoping to force a marriage and get his hands on her fortune? Aristotle and Stephanos are set on the case.
That summer, Aristotle decides to absent himself from Athens for a while and travels to Kos to return one of his students at the Lykeion, to the young man's father. Stephanos, who also needs to go to Kos to track down the uncle of his wife-to-be in order to sort out a potential property dispute, accompanies them. Some hard to stomach parts of Chapter XX.
Disturbed by a commotion during a visit to a brothel,
Stephanos comes across the body of a man who has obviously been poisoned
with hemlock. The dead man had recently married again and his widow is
accused of the murder by her stepson, but is she really guilty?
5. Mysteries of Eleusis
This is the latest in Margaret Doody's series on Aristotle and Stephanos. The event that triggers the involvement of Aristotle and Stephanos is one of a number of petty and not so petty thefts which plague Athens, Peiraeus, and Eleusis. In time, the events in this book overlap considerably with those in the previous one, Poison in Athens.
