“A Grecian mystery with equal parts antiquities and moussaka!”
Lilah Shahkhor
The Rose of Rhodes is Book Four in The Inspector Reynard Series by Lita-Luise Chappell. Like the previous three in the series, while it does progress from the book before it, this works just as well as a stand-alone. Even though it had been a couple of years since I’d read the earlier novels, The Rose of Rhodes fully portrayed the characters who populate the series so that I wasn’t lost trying to figure out or remember who’s who. With that said, having read all the series so far, it was a pleasure to get reacquainted with Lucien Reynard and his family again. Here we find him in this latest installment, along with his wife Chante, his father Professor Gervais, and their young daughter Melodia, now 6 years old, in a post-pandemic world just starting to recover from the shutdowns brought about by Covid-19. Happy and eager to return to work, they’ve just accepted their first new assignment from UNESCO, investigating the theft of antiquities from an archaeological dig on the Greek island of Rhodes.
What follows is both an entertaining and twisty detective story as well as a vivid immersion in Greek culture and history as it takes place in and around the Old City of Rhodes. Lita’s books are always dense with highly researched facts and history, a lot of which comes from her own travels and studies in the parts of the world being described, adding an extra layer of authenticity to the plot as it unfolds.
The official website of Lita-Luise Chappell, writer on sex, magic, food, distant lands, and everyday life with articles, poetry, novels, travelogues, rituals, cookbooks, and short-stories.
