Review: The threshing circle
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 07 19, 2014
Set on the Greek island of Crete, this thriller looks first at life during the hated Nazi German occupation and then at modern day in 2004. We are early in no doubt that this book contrasts outsiders with islanders, and that lives will be lost.An English girl stuck on Crete during the war falls in love with a Cretan freedom fighter and one of the local women smilingly gives her a gift of red silk, but on this is a picture of a mermaid with forked tail, which implies a loose woman. Not knowing the secret, the girl keeps the silk and so is implicated in the deaths of Nazi paratroops.In modern day, Kirsty, a Scottish divorcee who has come to spend a warm winter serving coffee in her kafenion, looks askance at the womanising local men and chats with the tourists.  Barba Yiorgos, a local elder, sips red village wine in the evening as he hears the cicadas chirp, musing on the changes he has seen. The two are thrown together when a young British couple come to investigate the disappearance of the 1940s Englishwoman. Secrets which have festered for generations are in danger of being uncovered.I liked several aspects of this book; the immediate feeling for the location and culture which never lets up; the strong characterisation and history ranging as far back as the Ancient Greeks. We learn that the village stone threshing floor is where the whole village would dance in a circle; threshing out the grain from stalks.  The spot was then used as a round theatre for village entertainment, also for a combat floor, the origins of later amphitheatres.I didn't like the lengthy scenes of captivity and violence against women late in the book, but we expect violence in a thriller.  The tension is skilfully built with Kirsty feeling under watch, vandalism, her friends disappearing, a shot being fired at a tourist and the British couple's Jeep being driven off a cliff.  The danger for Kristy mounts as she keeps asking questions of people and seeing different aspects of the island - locals resent foreigners buying up cottages, while they also dislike a big landowner who wants to build housing on his end of the island. Drugs being grown in remote areas are a distinct possibility. So in more ways than one Kirsty and Barba Yiorgos are walking into trouble when they try to find the couple and discover what really did happen during the occupation.Read THE THRESHING CIRCLE by Neil Grimmett for the armchair travel, the copious food and drink, the dancing, hospitality and history, the red mud rain as Sahara dust falls.  As a bonus, you get a haunting and intriguing crime story.