One Last Chance (Chief Inspector Andreas Kaldis Mystery)

by Jeffrey Siger

When Chief Inspector Andreas Kaldis's longtime assistant, Maggie, returns to her ancestral home on Ikaria for her 104-year-old grandmother's funeral, she quickly realizes not only was Yiayia likely murdered, but that a series of other long-lived Ikariots had recently died under the same suspicious circumstances. Back in Athens, Andreas and his chief detective Yianni pursue a smuggling and protection ring embedded in the Greek DEA, and its possible involvement in the assassination of an undercover cop.
But then Maggie and Yianni uncover a connection between their respective leads in the elder-killings on Ikaria and the DEA corruption case, and they realize that there are international intrigues far more dangerous at play than anyone had imagined.

• ISBN10: 1728252954
• ISBN13: 9781728252957
• Publish Date: 5 May 2022
• Publish Status: Active
• Out of Print: 14 June 2024
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Poisoned Pen Press
• Format: Paperback (US Trade)
• Pages: 304
• Language: English

Reviews

[annieb123]

Originally posted on my blog: Nonstop Reader.

One Last Chance is the 12th Andreas Kaldis procedural by Jeffrey Siger. Released 5th April 2022 by Poisoned Pen Press, it's 304 pages and is available in hardcover, paperback, and ebook formats. It's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links and references throughout. I've really become enamored of ebooks with interactive formats lately.

This is a very well written police procedural with an ensemble cast living and working in Greece. The characterizations are believable, well rendered, with smoothly written interactions and motivations. The descriptive prose is beautiful and the entire narrative flows very well. I wasn't yanked out of my suspension of disbelief once during the book. As always, the setting steals the show. Every page was redolent with the scents and sights of Greece and the author does a superlative job of showing the different locales and their local color and sights.

The mystery is self contained in this book, so it works well as a standalone. The entire series is so well written that I recommend reading them all. Readers who come to the series with this book won't have any trouble keeping up; the author is adept at providing necessary backstory without info-dumping or spoon feeding. With 12 books extant in the series, it would be a good candidate for a long weekend binge read.

It's not derivative at all, but it definitely falls into the subgenre of procedurals which feature exotic local settings, people, and cuisines, such as the Bruno novels by Martin Walker, and Brunetti by Donna Leon.

Five stars.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.