Detective Grigoris Mysteries
My imaginative, ever-deepening series of mysteries opens up an entirely new experience of the bygone world of the Eastern Mediterranean at the turn of the millennium.
UPDATE3- The first Detective Grigoris story will be published in January 2025. More details to come soon.
UPDATE2- On 8 June 2024, the second revised version of the Detective Grigoris Novel 1 was finished.
UPDATE- On 26 January 2024, a draft of the Detective Grigoris Novel 1 was completed, a project started in 2021.
Start of Series Context
In 1999 Athens, failed theology student Grigoris Kardamylios, alienated by an odd hereditary custom from participating in the family shipping company, sets out to become a private detective. After an unexpected adventure involving the Orthodox Patriarchate in Istanbul and visit to the Byzantine-era monasteries of Mt. Athos, his nascent investigative career is almost undone in Crete. When his misadventures become the subject of media intrigue, Grigoris embarks on a deeper and action-packed series of investigations, involving terrorism, suicides and complex international conflicts.
About The Detective
The grandson of an Orthodox priest and descendant of a tanking shipping firm which his younger sister will solely inherit, due to an odd family custom, Grigoris is an unlikely, almost accidental detective. Drawing on a combination of reason and intuition, combined with great spirit of curiosity and humanism, he stumbles through his cases into an ever-expanding series of mysteries. Often, it seems his own ignorance and misguided intentions leave him lost, but a native stubbornness and determination keeps him on track. Fundamentally trusting in himself, his evaluation of events and people, and enjoying a good relationship with the Athonite monks, Grigoris becomes at once an ancient, Byzantine and modern character, taking inspiration and from and interacting with multiple iterations f his region.
The novels and stories include a rich and unforgettable array of recurring characters. This ensemble cast of characters, including friends, family, enemies, villains and more, are not only unforgettable; they are also largely ‘international.’ The multi-national and multi-lingual aspect of this European setting alone makes for a more diverse mystery and international-intrigue than is often encountered in the genre.
About Detective Grigoris (Novel 1)
This nine-chapter epic (259,000 words) tells eight separate but interconnected mysteries, all contributing to an exciting and unexpected conclusion in the ninth chapter. Detective Grigoris travels widely in Greece and abroad, to prove his investigative mettle and solve an increasingly confusing and complex bunch of interconnected incidents, with both tension and comedy, reflecting his relationships with persons known and unknown.
The novel is also rich in musical, literary, and philosophical allusions and influences. As such it is not simply a ‘genre’ book, but a vibrant literary repository of themes that recur in unexpected ways, from questions of causality and epistemology to fate, freedom and virtue. I have written it with great attention and care; despite its length, my hope is that it will be the sort of book readers will wish to return to, not just a commercial item to be consumed and forgotten. This is why it took three years to write.
About the Further Series (Novels 2-6)
Novel 2: Picks up where novel 1 left off, and similarly set in the context of real and imagined contemporaneous events. The book covers cases between 2003-2008, as Grigoris cements his reputation as ‘Greece’s most famously obscure private detective.’ Title TBD.
Novel 3: Cases from 2009-2017. Following several harrowing events in the personal life of the detective, and the national life of his country, Grigoris goes into self-imposed early retirement—only to find that his perilous avocation will not let him go so easily. Title: The Retirement of Detective Grigoris.
Novel 4: Cases from 2019-2023. In a riotously funny return to form, the middle-aged detective, unwilling to embrace modern wares like the common Smartphone, is left to his own devices when solving cases using both old-fashioned and new-fangled technology—but mostly, his wits. Title: The Technology of Detective Grigoris.
Novel 5: Cases from 2021-2022: The most complex and action-packed set of cases in the series, compacted in time, takes Grigoris from the Persian Gulf to Istanbul to the Balkans and elsewhere in Europe, as he tries to do the impossible—that is, defy the family ban by recovering a Kardamylios S.A. embargoed commercial vessel during the Russia-Ukraine war. Title: The Obsession of the Black Sea.
Novel 6: Cases between 2024-2026. Bringing it all back home, and tying up all the loose ends going back to Novel 1—and, even over centuries of family and national history—this dark and dramatic grand finale of the Detective Grigoris series answers every question (including those that readers never knew were present in the series), while transforming the lives of all the characters involved. Will it be the detective’s final mission, or just a taste of future challenges—and what will resolving the mystery mean for family, company and country? Title: The Obsession of the Aegean Sea.
Some Literary and Musical Analyses that Give Insight into My Writing Process
After completing the first Detective Grigoris novel, I compiled some essays that give further insight into my entire research and writing process since 2021. When such rare insight is provided at all, it is usually provided as a paid supplement; however, as i have great respect for the writers, artists and scholars who have influenced me, I believe the best approach is to make this information freely available. Visit the following links for more information.
“Newspaper Columns and the Epistolary in Detective Grigoris,” by Christopher Deliso
“The Musicality of Detective Grigoris: Exploring a Song’s Heritage and Literary Life,” by Christopher Deliso
“Voltaire’s Unexpected Influence on My Detective Fiction,” by Christopher Deliso
“Edgar Allan Poe and the Horror of Dutch Painting,” by Christopher Deliso
Series Thoughts
Every day since the middle of 2021, when I first hit upon this idea in the haunted quietude of the pandemic, I have devoted unending hours of thought to every character, concept and plot in this series, writing and rewriting, thinking aloud, going for walks and imagining scenarios, discussing and learning from friends and colleagues. I have written well over 300,000 words of novel, additional novel chapters, and short stories that will become part of the future novels.
It has not been easy. I turned down a publishing deal, but it was for the best; at that time (2022), I didn’t properly know the characters or the story. It was a continual learning lesson—writing, or, traveling in the dark. Yet the destination was always there; it just needed finding.
Many times, I thought I should give up, and as of December 2024, I still don’t have an agent. However, I know that I was supposed to write this book, to bring these characters and their stories to you, and that my work is necessary—a philosophical term that recurs often in the series.
If you are a publisher or literary agent—this series will succeed. Let’s talk.
If you are an aspiring writer with a dream—if I could have done this, you can too. Never lose hope, always believe in yourself, and just keep writing.