The Palimpsest Murders

The Palimpsest Murders

by Reed Stirling

 

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GENRE: Historical mystery

 

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BLURB: Day one: check-in on the Iphigenia, a Boat & Bike home for thirty guests of diverse backgrounds on a one week excursion through Holland and Belgium. Personalities clash, conflicts arise.

 

Day seven: a body is found in canal waters at the stern of the boat. On the final morning a second body is discovered.

 

Who among the cyclists and crew is hateful and motivated enough to kill? Twice. How are the two murders related? Why two coins for the ferryman? Is the phoenix jug, both admired and derided, merely symbolic? How does the death mask of Agamemnon lead to resolution?

 

Determining truth entails travelling from Amsterdam to Bruges to Paris to the ancient site of Mycenae in Greece where what’s past is shown to be prologue.

Excerpt:

 

Day one: check-in on the Iphigenia, our Boat & Bike home for the week, was at one PM. 

 

Day seven: at seven-thirty AM, the body of one of our group was discovered floating in the oily turbidity between the stern of the boat and the concrete quay, hawser lines creating a contorted web of fixed lines above the macabre still-life. We were all taken aback, all shocked, incredulous, some decidedly reduced to tears.

 

A lot of water had passed under a lot of bridges between the two events and much consideration was required before definite links could be confirmed and conclusions arrived at with any certainty, the findings of Belgian police authorities on all accounts notwithstanding. We touring cyclists were all party to it, meeting on board, socializing in gabfests or biking along the scenic byways and stopping to comment on the windmills and historic sites, and, significantly, we all had our takes on everyone, the victim included.

 

“Fitting entrance to the portals of Styx,” one erudite observer opined with an unobstructed view of the corpse, but by including that allusion here I’m definitely getting ahead of myself. Way ahead of myself. There was so much more.

 

 

 

A Word With the Author

Q.         Did you always want to be an author?

 

A.         Pretty much. As a teen in high school, I wrote poetry, mostly about girls I felt attracted to. I never sent the poems on to the person(s) in question. Imagery! I just didn’t get it.

            Later, at university I wrote prose poems and dedicated them to co-eds that I felt attracted to. Those wannabe lyrical overtures are still in the box. I had to get outside of the box, get over my shyness and reticence.

            Joyce Carol Oates oversaw my MA thesis. She was an inspiration. No poems for her, however, just essays. But she did lead me into the realm of serious fiction. Subsequently, John Fowles took hold of my brain with The Magus. My muse got closer to me and eventually I got a short narrative published. I was off and running. Over the following years, I’ve had many literary pieces published in journals and reviews and more recently four novels with BWL. Inc.   

 

 

Q.         Tell us about the publication of your first book.

 

A.         My first published novel is Shades of Persephone, which I began writing in Greece on holiday. While travelling around the Mediterranean, I fell in love with the old Venetian harbour of Chania, a city on the north coast of Crete, reputed to be the oldest site of western civilization in Europe. What a setting for fiction! What plots might have unfolded here given the fascinating history of the island! Why not a contemporary one? 

Inspired by ubiquitous mythical signage, but especially by Lawrence Durrell’s The Alexandria Quartet and John Fowles’ The Magus, novels I was reading at the time, I began sketching out plausible characters of varying backgrounds, foremost among whom, Steven Spire, a young expat as narrator and central character of artistic temperament in need of purpose. Bar and café conversations led to hints of foreign intrigue. Ancient ruins gave way to Nazi runes. Crooked laneways led to mountain retreats and buried secrets. Hydra-headed truth demanded a place on the table along with the ouzo and artichoke hearts. And love, naturally, raised all expectations with the birth, mirroring Aphrodite’s rise from the sea, of Magalee De Bellefeuille.

Shades of Persephone is a literary mystery that will entertain those who delight in exotic settings, foreign intrigue, and the unmasking of mysterious characters. Crete in 1980-81, more specifically the old Venetian harbour of Chania, provides the background against which expat Steven Spire labours in pursuit of David Montgomery, his enigmatic and elusive mentor, who stands accused in absentia of treachery and betrayal. The plot has many seams through which characters slide, another of them being the poet Emma Leigh, widow of Montgomery’s imposing Cold War adversary, Heinrich Trüger. In that the setting is Crete, the source of light is manifold, but significant inspiration for Steven Spire comes from Magalee De Bellefeuille, his vision of Aphrodite and his muse. “Find Persephone,” she directs him, “and you’ll find David Montgomery.” Her prompts motivate much of the narrative, including that of the Cretan underground during the Nazi occupation, 1941- 45. 

            Shades of Persephone presents a story of love and sensuality, deception and war, spiritual quest and creative endeavour. The resolution takes an unanticipated turn but comes as no surprise to the discerning reader. Like Hamlet who must deal with his own character in following the injunctions of his ghostly father, Steven Spire discovers much about the city to which he has returned, but much more about himself and his capacity for love. 

 

 

 

Q.         Besides yourself, who is your favourite author in the genre you write?

 

A.         John Banville. After reading The Sea, which is a lovely, lyrical story of past youthful experience seen against the realities of the present, I was completely taken in by how he writes. His manipulation of language is superb, in both serious and humorous depictions. His characters can be quirky but definitely engrossing. I’ve read all that he has published to date and that includes his Benjamin Black series of whodunits. His writing inspires me in mine. 

 

 

Q.         What’s the best part of being an author? The worst?

 

A.         Not an easy question to answer. An idea will grip me, then comes the amplification of that idea involving plot, setting, and point of view. This part of writing fiction is interesting. Developing plausible characters always presents fascinating possibilities. Such efforts in pulling a story together I enjoy despite the inherent problems. Sometimes an unruly character will lead me astray. When I have completed a first draft, that’s when the real fun begins for me. I like rewriting — as many times as it takes to get something satisfactory, but I don’t think the writing is ever finished. 

            I lean towards mystery in my writing, with romantic entanglement an integral part of plot development. Greek mythology and literary allusion can contribute to the creation of prominent characters, the monstrous and the mundane equally.

            The worst part of being an author is the promotion that inevitably follows publication. It takes me away from real writing and the creative process.

 

Q.         What are you working on now?

 

A.         At present I am playing around with ideas for another novel that I’ve speculatively entitled A bouquet of Darts. Although the setting is similar in places to that in a previous work of fiction, namely, The Palimpsest Murders, which is my latest release (September, 2023), and despite the overlapping of a few themes, this work in progress represents a completely new direction. It is not part of a series.

Eros, the Greek god of love and desire, is my narrator. I think he will prove the most interesting character of the lot I’m calling into being. He will certainly have much to say about himself and the individuals he feels impelled to observe, eavesdrop on, and take shots at with his arrows.

In revealing his personal history (so far), Eros mentions that “in the cauldron of evolution there was a time —centuries, millennia— when I was dormant in terms of human involvement, bored in fact, spent much of my time shooting arrows at the stars, to no avail, of course, other than to create minor fiery effects. Those that came into being and gave me voice and stature were ignorant of that fact, the long hiatus between spectacular nebulae and the birth and death of stars. Though they were conscious of the significance of stars and the constellations. All of this is to say, we so-called immortals evolved lockstep with them; the more sophisticated they became, so with us. They gave us substance, personality, powers, and through us they began to understand themselves more thoroughly and the world they inhabited. Mutual dependency. They created us to explain what they didn’t understand, which is, as I have maintained since the outset, the central paradox that defines our existence. We were always there in potential just as life in Gaia’s domain, which is the universe writ large, was always there in potential, human life in particular. We gods and goddesses hung out in the green room of possibility. But as to immortality, forget it. Eternal life for us is a phantom concept: we will cease to exist with the death of the last human. In this assertion, I paraphrase the ideas of a French philosopher I once became intrigued with. I shot no arrows in his direction.”

Often pitted against the designs of Eros is his twin Eris, goddess of strife and disorder. Of the classical contrariness of Eris and Eros, it can be said that they are mythical manifestations of the yin yang of being.

 

 

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AUTHOR Bio and Links:

 

Reed Stirling lives in Cowichan Bay, BC, and writes when not painting landscapes, travelling, or taking coffee at The Drumroaster, a local café where physics and metaphysics clash daily. Before retiring and taking up writing novels, he taught English Literature. Several talented students of his have gone on to become successful award-winning writers. 

 

He and his wife built a log home in the hills of southern Vancouver Island, and survived totally off the grid for twenty-five years during which time the rooms in that house filled up with books, thousands of student essays were graded, and innumerable cords of firewood were split.

 

Literary output: 

Shades Of Persephone, published in 2019, is a literary mystery set in Greece. 

Lighting The Lamp, a fictional memoir, was published in March 2020. 

Set in Montreal, Séjour Saint-Louis (2021), dramatizes family conflicts. 

The Palimpsest Murders, a European travel mystery, is forthcoming. 

Shorter work has appeared over the years in a variety of publications including Dis(s)ent, Danforth Review, Fickle Muses, Fieldstone Review, and Humanist Perspectives.

 

Intrigue is of primary interest, with romantic entanglement an integral part of the action. Greek mythology plays a significant role in underpinning plots. Allusions to art, literature, philosophy, and religion serve a similar function. Reed sits down to write every day and tries to leave the desk having achieved at least a workable page. Frequently what comes of his effort amounts to no more than a serviceable paragraph, a single sentence, or a metaphor that might work in a context yet to be imagined. 

 

 

Links:

 

 

reedstirlingwrites.com

reedstirling@gmail.com

http://bwlpublishing.ca

https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/bookswelove 

 https://authorcentral.amazon.comgp/home

https.//ca.linkedin.com>reed-stirling

Affiliated Authors @ LinkedIn

Reed stirling @ Instagram

 

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GIVEAWAY INFORMATION 

 

Reed Stirling will be awarding a $15 Amazon/BN GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.

 

 

a Rafflecopter giveaway