The Athenian Murders by Jose Carlos Somoza

The Athenian Murders by Jose Carlos Somoza
On one level, The Athenian Murders is an historical mystery set in ancient Athens. The body of student of Plato’s Academy has been found, his body mauled by wolves. A tutor at the academy hires Hercules Pontor, known as the decipherer of enigmas, to find out what really happened. Pontor is drawn into a web of murder and secrets as he tries to find out what really went happened. The historical detail is good, as is the philosophical discussion.

But there are more levels to this novel than that. The Athenian Murders is actually a book within a book, an ancient manuscript that is being translated as we go along. The translator uses footnotes to communicate with the readers. These footnotes start by explaining what he is doing as he translates the novel. Early on, he discovers that the novel is an eidetic text – one with hidden images in the text. These images seem to have some meaning, and the translator is drawn in. But soon the borders between fiction and reality begin to blur. At times, the text begins to refer to the “translator” in ways that reflect what our translator is doing. And as things go on, the characters in the book at times seem to react to the eidetic symbols and, once, to the translator. What started as one mystery turns into two: the story of the Athenian murder plus the story of the translator. Likewise, what started out on one level as a standard historical mystery also becomes a book about how fiction works, how we respond to fiction, and the relationship between fiction and life.

So, as readers we are left with three overriding questions. How well does the base mystery work? How well does the second meta-fiction layer work? And how do they work together as a whole. The answer to all three is “pretty well,” though in all three cases I thought it could have been better. To be fair, the author attempted something pretty ambitious, and the fact that he mostly succeeded is actually an accomplishment. But I did think that the base mystery came to a conclusion that wasn’t as satisfactory as I would have liked (though perhaps I’m guilty here of judging the book based on where I wanted it to go, rather than just judging it for what it is). The story of the narrator got very strange and even frayed at points, but it in some ways came to a more interesting conclusion than the base mystery (though, here, it’s perhaps because I had different expectations). I also admit that I’m fan of fiction that plays with and explores the nature of fiction – from Eco to Fforde – so I was drawn into this story in many ways more than I was to the underlying mystery. Finally, the two parts do indeed play well off of one another, and some of the strongest, most intense points in the book are those points where the two layers are interacting most strongly.

In the midst of all this, there is also a lot of interesting philosophy related to Plato’s views of reality and our understanding of it. (In fact, the original Spanish title of the book was apparently The Cave of Ideas.) It’s pretty well done, and not just thrown in for discussion but actually and essential part of what the book is, what the hidden eidetic symbols mean, and, in the end, the underlying thrust of the book.

So, in the end, I thought it was a good book, though one that could have been better had the underlying mystery held together a bit better in the end.