The Catalyst
About this ebook
As the time ripens for an explosion, the catalyst turns out to be Greece herself, working through film actress Rosamund Oakley, who is inadvertently cast in the role of Aphrodite, Greek goddess of beauty, love, and mischief.
Hugh, having met Rosamund on a sight-seeing excursion, is attracted by her beauty and mystery, which for him match and enhance his exotic new surroundings. But almost immediately a strange series of events leads to three gruesome murders—one in which a moral criminal figures, one in which the intended victim is well and truly skewered, and finally a murder-by-suicide.
Another catalyst, this time in the guise of a folk-singing couple with a clue to the identity of the crazed killer, triggers the shattering resolution to this tale of three travellers who found more hate than love among the ruins of ancient Greece.
About the author
Josephine Bell was born Doris Bell Collier in Manchester, England. Between 1910 and 1916 she studied at Godolphin School, then trained at Newnham College, Cambridge until 1919. At the University College Hospital in London she was granted M.R.C.S. and L.R.C.P. in 1922, and a M.B. B.S. in 1924.
Bell was a prolific author, writing forty-three novels and numerous uncollected short stories during a forty-five year period.
Many of her short stories appeared in the London Evening Standard. Using her pen name she wrote numerous detective novels beginning in 1936, and she was well-known for her medical mysteries. Her early books featured the fictional character Dr. David Wintringham who worked at Research Hospital in London as a junior assistant physician. She helped found the Crime Writers' Association in 1953 and served as chair during 1959-60.