Title: The Threshing Circle

Author: Neil Grimmett

Genre: Mystery, Suspense

Publication Date: May 12, 2015 (original publication date February 19, 2014)

About the Book

(from Goodreads)

A young couple arrive on the Greek island of Crete and begin prying into the execution of a beautiful English woman during the German occupation sixty years before. They enter a labyrinth of forbidden love, betrayals, murder, greed and vendettas, old and new.
Then they disappear.
A feisty Scottish woman and an irascible, Zorba-like Greek form a reluctant allegiance in a desperate attempt to find and rescue them. They both have very different motives for their involvement. Their search will take them to hidden rituals, ceremonies, remote gatherings, famous monasteries and villages abandoned after decades of vendettas. To the remote island of Gavdos and finally back to a place that, “Even God does not know exists”.
They will encounter characters good and evil; some modern and pragmatic, others ancient and magical.
All the time they are being stalked by the sons of man who seeks to complete the crimes of his father and sate his own greed and insane desire for vengeance. These men are more animal than human and have been raised in the remote mountains for the sole purpose of carrying out the brutal will of their father.
The mystery of the real, hidden Crete runs deep, and THE THRESHING CIRCLE explores some of the myths and romance while not shying away from its often violent nature.
By the end choices will have to be made. If such actions are really possible on an island where many Cretans still believe that: “The Cycle of Blood”, can never stop flowing.

My Review

I received a free ecopy of this book for an honest review.

The Threshing Circle grabbed my interest from the first page. I often find prologues boring but necessary, but even the prologue in this book was good. The story is full of mystery and suspense and starts with a tragic love story.

Neil Grimmett’s writing flows well and is easy to follow. It includes some of Crete’s history, as well as Cretan beliefs, but not so much that it takes over the story.

The characters are interesting and complicated. The main character, Kirsty, is a strong woman who moved to Crete after her divorce and now has her own small business. She’s smart and likes to play detective, so when her new “friends,” Patrick and Eleni, disappear, she feels like they’re in trouble and she needs to find them even though they had lied to her several times.

Even more interesting are the Cretans. At the beginning of the book, Kirsty can’t stand Barba Yiorgos and believes him to just be a dirty old man. That he is, but he’s so much more and there’s more to him than even he realizes.

Yiorgos’ cousin, Diomidis, warns Kirsty to stay away from Yiorgos because he is evil. She doesn’t know which man to believe. Or are they both evil? The characters are so complex it’s not easy to figure out.

I enjoyed The Threshing Circle with all of its twists, suspense and complicated relationships. And the ending was perfect!

Purchase on Amazon

About the Author

(from Goodreads)

Neil Grimmett has had over eighty five short stories published. In the UK by among others: London Magazine, Stand, Panurge, Iron, Ambit, Postscripts Magazine, Pretext etc. Australia, Quadrant, South Africa, New Contrast. Plus stories in the leading journals of Singapore, India, France, Canada, and the USA, where he has appeared in Fiction, The Yale Review, DoubleTake, The southern Humanities Review, Green Mountains Review, Descant, The Southern Review, West Branch and Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. He has appeared online in Blackbird, Plum Ruby Review, Tatlin’s Tower, Web Del Sol, In Posse Review, m.a.g., Word Riot, Blue Moon Review, 3AM, Gangway, Eclectica, The Cortland Review, Segue, The Dublin Quarterly , Ducts, Sugar Mule, Mysterical E, Thuglit and over thirty others. His stories have also appeared in the anthologies: ENGLAND CALLING, BOOK OF VOICES and Italy’s ISBN’s Top International Stories. He has made the storySouth Million Writers Notable Short Story list for the last three years. In addition, he has won the Write On poetry award, 7 Oppenheim John Downes Awards, 5 major British Arts Council Awards, a Royal Society of Authors award and was just awarded a major grant from the Royal Literary Fund. He has been signed over the last ten years by twelve of the leading literary agents in both the UK and USA. His current agent is Jon Elek at United Agents who is just going out with his 2nd literary thriller, THE HOARD.
His first, THE THRESHING CIRCLE, has just been published on Amazon KDP Select.