Me In the Land of Mani-acs.

Vathia

Some might say I’ve been there all my life. But they would be wrong. I’d never been to that middle-finger peninsula at the southernmost tip of Greece’s Peloponnese known as
“The Mani” until three years ago. (My November 13, 2010 MIE post described the region and its history in detail.)

What I found there I knew I had to work into a Kaldis novel, but I was missing the spark of inspiration I needed to tie it all together. At the beginning of this year I received a note from a friend detailing a story of her family in the Mani. Eureka! I’d found my inspiration.

I finished the first draft of that new book (Kaldis #6) a week ago, and “took off” this past week to do a bit of promotional preparation for the release of Andreas’ fifth mystery, MYKONOS AFTER MIDNIGHT, coming September 3^rd. But this isn’t meant to be a BSP piece for MYKONOS AFTER MIDNIGHT (decreasing all caps size for repeat mention) because that happens next week, three days before the official release of MYKONOS AFTER MIDNIGHT.

Tomorrow I take off for a week of exploring the Mani to verify the accuracy of my geographical and background facts. I always want my readers to trust me so that when I make the leap from the real to the imagined, we all jump together.

What I’d like to do with you now is share a slightly fictionalized version of the tale that inspired my 2014 book. Some might think it could serve as the basis for an entire novel, but I look at it only as a scene in the first chapter.

Others might see it as an opportunity to steal my idea—such as the you know who you are out there who I’ve been informed published a book ripping off my Murder in Mykonos plot elements, transported to a different culture and continent. All I can say to those sorts is, “Go ahead, Pilgrim...take your best shot...make my day.”

Here’s the story and as unimaginable as it seems, it’s real:

In the early 1900’s a young medical student studying in Athens received a message from his father to return home to the Mani at once. When he arrived home he learned that his younger sister had humiliated their father by getting pregnant by a young man in the village. Her lover had proposed to marry the sister, but the father refused. Instead, in front of the sister and her lover he told his son to shoot and kill them both.

The lovers ran from the house, but the brother caught up with his sister in the courtyard and murdered her there. The lover he caught and killed at the port, trying to escape in a boat.

At the trial of the brother for killing his sister and her lover, the Judge was about to render his decision when the JUDGE’S mother stood up in court and yelled at her son,

“Just remember that you murdered your own sister for the same reason.”

The brother was acquitted and returned to medical school.

Romeo and Juliet, Mani style.