THE DEATH OF ACHILLES

Tortured souls comment on men and morality in this violent exercise which has a certain muy brava muscle tone, somewhere between Hemingway and Hammett. Feeling himself withering in academic towers, Irish Hugh Barbour, Greek scholar, hoping for light as well as heat from a Greek sun, goes to Greece as an interrogator for British Intelligence during their bush-combing operations in Cyprus. Flatly accepting the lack of righteousness in the British position, Barbour attempts to deal with the human realities, admiring courage, pitying weakness, hating false standards. Yet he is sickened with the stupidity and brutality of ""causeless"" military operations and his own work. His relationship with a Cypriot girl, Rodi, working as librarian for the British, offers some hope at last, but when her young brother is arrested as a terrorist, that hope is lost in despair. That despair is superfluous in the reality of the moment when the leader Achilles is hunted, found and killed, while it is Barbour who leads the docile Nikos to his rebirth and death.... No judgments are made in this novel, no blessings given, and it is rugged, readable and supra masculine.