Murder is Everywhere: Chief Inspector Andreas Kaldis #13

Saturday, January 6, 2024

News From My Sick Bed

Saturday––Jeff

Yesterday, I missed my traditional Saturday posting time because of a horrendous stomach flu, but now I’m back in the game.

Precisely one month from today–that’s February 6^th for the finger counting challenged––AT ANY COST, my 13^th Chief Inspector Andreas Kaldis mystery thriller, will be released by my new Publisher, Severn House, an imprint of Canongate Books.

That means this is my once-a-year opportunity to blatantly promote myself in the hope of convincing all my friends and fans to preorder AT ANY COST at any of these sites—and perhaps stop by one of my live in-person book signings listed at the end of this post (more will be added the closer we get to February):

European customers can order AT ANY COST from Grantham Book Services, or through Severn House’s Sales Director Michelle Duff at michelle@severnhouse.com

And if you’ve already ordered it, THANK YOU and consider this a plea for a five-star review on Goodreads (four stars is acceptable if you never give five stars except to family :).

Those Goodreads reviews are important…especially for a new publisher.

So, what can I tell you besides please order AT ANY COST?

How about if I share my in-depth answers to questions put to me by Eleni Sakellis of the New York City-based Greek and English language versions of The National Herald (in Greek, Ethnikos Kirix). She’s an astute interviewer who’s followed my career since the beginning…for which I’m eternally grateful to Eleni and The National Herald--the Greek-American community’s newspaper of record.

Take it away, Eleni, in your front page story!

Hearing that the next book in your favorite series is about to be published is one of the joys of being a mystery fan. So fans of the Chief Inspector Andreas Kaldis series, rejoice! At Any Cost, the 13^th book in the bestselling mystery series by Jeffrey Siger, is set to be released on February 6. Siger spoke with The National Herald about his compelling new book and also shared a sneak peek at his next one, #14 in the series.

TNH. What inspired this particular mystery?

JMS. Your question is a sterling example of how the simplest of questions can elicit an inordinately complex answer. In this instance that’s especially so because I am a “seat of the pants” writer who works without any outline whatsoever and allows my seed of an idea to germinate and grow as it wishes in whatever direction it chooses. For years, I’d toyed with writing about the horrific forest fires that plague Greece each summer, with an emphasis on those who profit from torching the land. But try as I might, I couldn’t see that issue alone generating the sort of gravitas implicit in the societal issues at the core of the other books in my Chief Inspector Andreas Kaldis series.

In July 2021, after a year and a half of Covid isolation, and even longer time away from Greece, I returned home to Mykonos, looking as always for a theme for my next book. A trip to Syros, an island I adore and always think of as the Grande Dame of the Cyclades, led me to wondering how Syros’ citizens felt about their island’s role as the region’s economic power having long past it by, while unimaginable prosperity had come to other Cycladic islands, such as Mykonos and Santorini.

What if there were a way to restore that glorious past without sacrificing its soul to tourism?

At around that time I became more aware of something called the metaverse and chatbots; artificial intelligence terms everyone now knows but were not that prominent in the summer of 2021. Then along came China pressing ahead heavily into establishing itself as a world power in the metaverse, Russia expanding its own propaganda efforts to meddle in other nations’ affairs, and an oil rich middle eastern nation seeking to use its wealth to obtain a seat at the table of major world powers. It was a eureka moment for inspiring my plotline. A consortium of three of the world’s richest autocratic nations seeking to change the world order by establishing the hub of 21^st century artificial intelligence development in a state-of-the-art facility at the cradle of democracy. All I was missing was a Greek location offering sufficient electric power to meet the extraordinary demands of the required technology.

It was as if the Fates were reading my thoughts, for it was then that I learned of the Greek government’s commitment to establishing major wind power operations on wildfire devastated Evia, and potentially transmitting that newly generated power to the Cyclades via Syros! All the bits and pieces of inspiration had come together, ordaining Syros as the setting for my new book. Now all I had to do was write it.

TNH. How long did the process take from idea to publication?

JMS. The simple answer would be two-and-a-half years. The more complicated one is that I started writing the book in late summer 2021, delivered it to my then publisher in late summer 2022 with the expectation it would come out in late 2022 or early 2023. That did not happen and so I took it to my new publisher who promised to publish it in February 2024.

TNH. What made you decide on Syros as the setting?

JMS. As I set out in more detail in response to your first question, Syros has always drawn me to it as the perfect setting for a story exploring how a community with a glorious past, now struggling to maintain its old ways, might respond to an unexpected opportunity offering riches and status in a measure beyond the island’s wildest dreams. It is an existential dilemma, for if accepted could well prove to be a deal with the devil, but if rejected, a decision mourned forever for what might have been.

TNH. What are you working on next?

JMS. Book #14 has a working title of “Not Dead Yet,” and is tentatively set in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, the southern Peloponnese coastline, and Athens. Here’s the opening scene:

The media had declared him dead a week ago, yet there he was, grizzled, tattered-clothed, and shoeless, plodding bear-like along a rugged Mediterranean shoreline head-down and oblivious to the pain inflicted upon his naked feet by the rough, uneven rocks. The breezy late-summer afternoon turned slightly chilly once the sun had completed its ritual deep orange setting, but the crisp sea-scented air and starlight-filled sky drove him on.

Until he found the body.

He stood stiff-backed and stared.

Then lay down beside her.

And cried.

–Jeff

Jeff’s upcoming events:

2024

All Live Events

Thursday, February 8, 7:00 p.m. MT
The Poisoned Pen Bookstore
Author Speaking and Signing
Scottsdale, AZ

Saturday, February 10, 2:00 p.m. PT
Book Carnival
Author Speaking and Signing
Orange, CA

Thursday, February 15, 7:00 p.m. PT
Third Place Books
Author Speaking and Signing
Lake Forest Park, WA

Wednesday, February 21, 6:00 p.m. ET
Mysterious Bookshop
Author Speaking and Signing
New York, NY

Friday, February 23, 7:00 p.m. ET
Mystery Lovers Bookshop
Author Speaking and Signing
Pittsburgh, PA

Thursday, February 29, 7:00 p.m. PT
Vroman’s Bookstore
Author Speaking and Signing
Pasadena, CA

Saturday, September 23, 2023

I Have a Favor to Ask...

Jeff–Saturday

I’m quick to do favors for people, but not very good at requesting the same for myself. I suspect it’s some sort of inborn thing. Yet, I believe the moment has arrived for me to test whether the relatively small favor I’m about to ask of a large group of people gathers momentum, or sits alone like a stone, ignored and unloved.

Cue the violins and tearful community sobs.

Fourteen years ago, Poisoned Pen Press published Murder in Mykonos, the first novel in my Chief Inspector Andreas Kaldis series. Over the years Poisoned Pen published eleven more in the series, all but the last under the inimitable editorial guidance of the legendary Barbara Peters. But with Barbara gone from PPP, and it under new ownership, I sensed the time had come to move on.

And I have.

I’m pleased beyond words to announce that Kaldis #13, AT ANY COST, will be published on February 6, 2024, by SEVERN HOUSE, an imprint of Canongate Books. They’re a terrific team of people who’ve made me feel right at home from the very first words we exchanged. But on February 6^th the rubber hits the road, and it comes down to selling books. I want to do my new publisher proud by doing just that.

Since no time is more important for selling books than the Preorder Period, at the bottom of this post are links to where you can purchase AT ANY COST online today, and be doing me a very large, much appreciated favor in the process.

For those of you who’d like to know a bit more about AT ANY COST, and my declaring it to be my best Kaldis book yet might not suffice, here’s what the jacket copy has to say:

Greece is burning and Chief Inspector Andreas Kaldis is determined to save his country from disaster.

Chief Inspector Kaldis is initially dismayed to be asked to investigate a series of suspicious forest fires that took place last summer. In Greece, forest fires are an inevitability, and he fears he and his team are being set up to take the political blame for this year’s blazes.

He quickly becomes suspicious, though, that the forests were torched for profit – and for a project on a far grander scale than the usual low-level business corruption. There are whispers on the wind that shadowy foreign powers intend to establish a surreptitious mega-internet presence on the island of Syros, with the intent to weaponize the digital world to their own dark ends.

Can Kaldis and his team stop the hostile foreign takeover of the idyllic island – or will the rise of the metaverse set not just Greece, but the whole world, on fire?