The Silver Stain: An Alex Mavros Mystery

Set in 2003, Johnston’s appealing fourth Alex Mavros mystery (after 2004’s The Golden Silence) takes the half-Greek, half Scottish PI to the island of Crete, to locate Maria Kondos, actress Cara Parks’s personal assistant, who’s disappeared. Parks, who’s starring in Freedom or Death, a film about the Nazi invasion and occupation of Crete, has refused to perform until Kondos is found. Mavros discovers that the filming has upset a number of people, including Rudolf Kersten, a German paratrooper who landed in Crete and later attempted to make reparations for Nazi atrocities, and David Waggoner, a British defender who now lives on the island. Mavros must deal with politics, corruption, and even the Cretan tradition of vendettas as secrets and grudges multiply. Fragments of memoirs from Kersten and Waggoner illustrate the horrors suffered by both sides during WWII. Readers will hope they won’t have to wait another eight years for Mavros’s next appearance. (May)