After the battered body of a woman is found on the Greek island of Thiminos, Athenian investigator Hermes Diaktoros inexplicably shows up to prove that the death was not an accident and find the killer. But Hermes brings mysteries of his own to this tiny, remote island.

A jilted bride weeps on an empty beach. A local doctor is attacked in an isolated churchyard. Trouble arrives at a bad time to the little Greek village of Morfi. And where there is trouble, there's Hermes Diaktoros, the mysterious fat man whose tennis shoes are always pristine and whose investigative methods are always unorthodox.