The Mystery of Healing
REVIEWS:
The characterisation is excellent: I came to care about Solon...He's a character who stays with you long after you've finished reading. And I finished reading far too quickly. THE BOOK BAG
Stunning and compelling...
The storyline is gripping...McGrath does a brilliant job keeping both tension and suspense high as the plot careens into a series of twists. Deeply atmospheric setting, multidimensional characters who are less than perfect but wear their foibles proudly, and intrigue keep the pages flying. This entry should garner McGrath a slew of sophisticated classic mystery fans. THE PRAIRIES BOOK REVIEW
The characterisation is excellent: I came to care about Solon...He's a character who stays with you long after you've finished reading. And I finished reading far too quickly. THE BOOK BAG
Stunning and compelling...
The storyline is gripping...McGrath does a brilliant job keeping both tension and suspense high as the plot careens into a series of twists. Deeply atmospheric setting, multidimensional characters who are less than perfect but wear their foibles proudly, and intrigue keep the pages flying. This entry should garner McGrath a slew of sophisticated classic mystery fans. THE PRAIRIES BOOK REVIEW
Solon of Pergamon turns detective when his cherished medical teacher is murdered. Suspicion falls on a mysterious student who holds a secret that threatens the feared ruling class. Tossed between the search for love and the precarious tides of the Roman Empire, Solon navigates with the same bloody-minded humanity it takes to be chief physician to the gladiators of a glittering age. Classic storytelling in an unforgettable setting.
The Mystery of Healing has been three years in the making. The idea for the central character, Solon, comes from the life of the famous second century physician, Galen, who was a doctor to the gladiators in his home city of Pergamon in the eastern Mediterranean before he emigrated to Rome. But there is no biographical overlap between Galen and Solon. They are quite different characters.
I was attracted by the spectacular settings of the gladiatorial games with its cruelty in contrast to someone who would care deeply for the unfortunate gladiators, a hazardous profession that barely rose above the status of slavery.
My working title for the novel was 'The Atoms of Love', which is a bit left-field, but reflects Solon's own search for love. There is a gentle irony to this first title, in so much as Solon's medical education would have had a strong element of materialism; seeing the body as a clump of atoms driven by humours. This way of thinking led to medical success and, in many ways, continues to do so. But Solon instinctively 'feels' there is something more eternal and good in the mix, rising above the material, despite it being near impossible to name it. He might be tempted to call it 'soul'. Much of the 'proof' for this is in the characters he encounters and the way they respond to life's circumstances. The human spirit is contained in the very vocation to care that brought him to medicine in the first place. But the inhumanity of the Roman gladiatorial world throws this into question.
Essentially Solon is looking for a wife, but gets caught up in a murder mystery when his former medical teacher is killed in doubious circumstances. Suspicion falls on a student, Cadmus, who attends the same farmhouse school Solon attended as a youth. Cadmus suffers from a form of Tourette's Syndrome, giving him an angry but harmless 'second voice', making it easy to convince a jury that he is possessed by demonic forces and therefore guilty of murder.
Solon is struck by the beautiful Sophia, a medical student, who cares deeply for Cadmus. Both Sophia and Solon share a wariness of love because of the absence of their respective parents. Solon's father was mysteriously banished from Pergamon, a legacy that has left deep scars and a need to understand the truth of his father's fate. Sophia craves acknowledgement from a father who doesn't know of her existence.
Solon believes Cadmus's second voice is a natural gift, but he comes to suspect it hides a secret. Indeed Solon discovers that his former teacher tried hypnosis on Cadmus to try to tease out hidden memories from his past. As Solon's affection for Sophia grows, battle lines are drawn with Pergamon's political powers who are wary of his attempts to uncover Cadmus's buried memory. The stage is set for a conflict between the powers of justice and love pitted against fear and cruelty, against the dramatic backdrop of ancient Pergamon.
I was attracted by the spectacular settings of the gladiatorial games with its cruelty in contrast to someone who would care deeply for the unfortunate gladiators, a hazardous profession that barely rose above the status of slavery.
My working title for the novel was 'The Atoms of Love', which is a bit left-field, but reflects Solon's own search for love. There is a gentle irony to this first title, in so much as Solon's medical education would have had a strong element of materialism; seeing the body as a clump of atoms driven by humours. This way of thinking led to medical success and, in many ways, continues to do so. But Solon instinctively 'feels' there is something more eternal and good in the mix, rising above the material, despite it being near impossible to name it. He might be tempted to call it 'soul'. Much of the 'proof' for this is in the characters he encounters and the way they respond to life's circumstances. The human spirit is contained in the very vocation to care that brought him to medicine in the first place. But the inhumanity of the Roman gladiatorial world throws this into question.
Essentially Solon is looking for a wife, but gets caught up in a murder mystery when his former medical teacher is killed in doubious circumstances. Suspicion falls on a student, Cadmus, who attends the same farmhouse school Solon attended as a youth. Cadmus suffers from a form of Tourette's Syndrome, giving him an angry but harmless 'second voice', making it easy to convince a jury that he is possessed by demonic forces and therefore guilty of murder.
Solon is struck by the beautiful Sophia, a medical student, who cares deeply for Cadmus. Both Sophia and Solon share a wariness of love because of the absence of their respective parents. Solon's father was mysteriously banished from Pergamon, a legacy that has left deep scars and a need to understand the truth of his father's fate. Sophia craves acknowledgement from a father who doesn't know of her existence.
Solon believes Cadmus's second voice is a natural gift, but he comes to suspect it hides a secret. Indeed Solon discovers that his former teacher tried hypnosis on Cadmus to try to tease out hidden memories from his past. As Solon's affection for Sophia grows, battle lines are drawn with Pergamon's political powers who are wary of his attempts to uncover Cadmus's buried memory. The stage is set for a conflict between the powers of justice and love pitted against fear and cruelty, against the dramatic backdrop of ancient Pergamon.
Would the ancient Greeks enjoy a good detective story?
There are plenty of examples of murder in Greek theatre. But an obvious difference with contemporary detective novels is that the killers in the ancient stories are usually the main protagonists, whereas the detective in a modern crime novel is rarely the murderer. In the ancient story, the story arc is the lead up to the murder, which often comes in the final act. The ancient stories ask why their heroes commit such heinous actions? What are the conditions, both psychological and metaphysical, that lead to the fateful moment? It's not a whodunnit but a whydunnit.
The hero's flaw creates a foulness that infects the entire city-state, even where the hero is an innocent victim of circumstance. He or she must share some, if not all, of the blame. It is a bit like an insurance company laying some of the blame on you for a car crash that was not you fault. You were at the scene. You are a portal for misfortune. You must share the blame.
When there is a foulness, someone or something must be sacrificed to renew order. Harmony is restored, but at the cost of the life of the hero. His or her death is redemptive. A necessary purgative.
Yet within this imprisoning moral space there is a self that is capable of freedom. Even if this freedom is an illusion, an independant self is an inescapable belief and it causes us to act in hope and fear. It is worthy of deep consideration.
In a modern crime drama, harmony is restored when the crime is solved, even where the killer embodies a generalised malevolance that needs to be expunged. The hero-detective of the modern crime story is blameless compared to the Greek tragic hero. Sometimes the modern is a superhero. Jack Reacher is omnicient, omni-present and all-powerful. He is complete and completed. The modern detective-hero is a 'saviour/outsider' who isn't sacrificed or doesn't die. They are needed to solve the mystery in the next installment. Order is restored when the killer is brought to justice. Society is a little safer.
The modern hero, of course, can have flaws. They can be a drinker or have a complex love life. They can be human. But their imperfections are rarely the cause of the main tragic action. In bad novels this flaw is forced upon the hero to give the detective a dilemma. Think of the cliched hard drinking detective. Solving a murder is the detective's job, just as fixing a leak is a plumber's job. It's not necessarily a dilemma. It takes skill to get the reader engaged.
The Mystery of Healing is a detective crime drama set in second century Pergamon. It is 'inauthentic' in the sense that it is not a genre of the time, as far as I'm aware. Solon of Pergamon is the central hero but he is - spoiler alert - not the murderer. The crime drama would be dead before it began if he were.
I wanted to try to capture an ancient sense of fatefulness in The Mystery of Healing. The protagonist in ancient stories is marinated in fate, like a pickled onion. They are an everyman, despite being of noble blood or a god, because they are flawed and often helpless in the face of events. He or she is part of a whole, a bigger entity, that moves and shape-shifts, driven by forces that are named as gods, but only truly known by their effects. Self-knowledge is realising how small you are in this whole. Though they are aware of themselves as part of the greater mix, the ancient heroes can acknowledge some responsibility for the unfolding events. They make choices that have consequences, but the sources of these choices may be more than the self. They may have eternal roots and agency.
Solon has vulnerabilities and flaws, but his two great virtues are his compassion and his medical skills. These give him powers, but he is more akin to Icarus, who flies too close to the sun and finds his waxed-wings melt, than superman. Most importantly, he is incomplete without love. But he never quite comes crashing to the ground and he lives fight another day.
The hero's flaw creates a foulness that infects the entire city-state, even where the hero is an innocent victim of circumstance. He or she must share some, if not all, of the blame. It is a bit like an insurance company laying some of the blame on you for a car crash that was not you fault. You were at the scene. You are a portal for misfortune. You must share the blame.
When there is a foulness, someone or something must be sacrificed to renew order. Harmony is restored, but at the cost of the life of the hero. His or her death is redemptive. A necessary purgative.
Yet within this imprisoning moral space there is a self that is capable of freedom. Even if this freedom is an illusion, an independant self is an inescapable belief and it causes us to act in hope and fear. It is worthy of deep consideration.
In a modern crime drama, harmony is restored when the crime is solved, even where the killer embodies a generalised malevolance that needs to be expunged. The hero-detective of the modern crime story is blameless compared to the Greek tragic hero. Sometimes the modern is a superhero. Jack Reacher is omnicient, omni-present and all-powerful. He is complete and completed. The modern detective-hero is a 'saviour/outsider' who isn't sacrificed or doesn't die. They are needed to solve the mystery in the next installment. Order is restored when the killer is brought to justice. Society is a little safer.
The modern hero, of course, can have flaws. They can be a drinker or have a complex love life. They can be human. But their imperfections are rarely the cause of the main tragic action. In bad novels this flaw is forced upon the hero to give the detective a dilemma. Think of the cliched hard drinking detective. Solving a murder is the detective's job, just as fixing a leak is a plumber's job. It's not necessarily a dilemma. It takes skill to get the reader engaged.
The Mystery of Healing is a detective crime drama set in second century Pergamon. It is 'inauthentic' in the sense that it is not a genre of the time, as far as I'm aware. Solon of Pergamon is the central hero but he is - spoiler alert - not the murderer. The crime drama would be dead before it began if he were.
I wanted to try to capture an ancient sense of fatefulness in The Mystery of Healing. The protagonist in ancient stories is marinated in fate, like a pickled onion. They are an everyman, despite being of noble blood or a god, because they are flawed and often helpless in the face of events. He or she is part of a whole, a bigger entity, that moves and shape-shifts, driven by forces that are named as gods, but only truly known by their effects. Self-knowledge is realising how small you are in this whole. Though they are aware of themselves as part of the greater mix, the ancient heroes can acknowledge some responsibility for the unfolding events. They make choices that have consequences, but the sources of these choices may be more than the self. They may have eternal roots and agency.
Solon has vulnerabilities and flaws, but his two great virtues are his compassion and his medical skills. These give him powers, but he is more akin to Icarus, who flies too close to the sun and finds his waxed-wings melt, than superman. Most importantly, he is incomplete without love. But he never quite comes crashing to the ground and he lives fight another day.