I was writing ‘Jason and the Sargonauts’ before I moved to Symi and it is a story that had a long writing process, but was finally finished on Symi, up at the old house at Ag Triada.
The story was simple; it’s all here in myth: Jason goes to find the Golden Fleece and takes with him a bunch of heroes. Simple. The thing is to add in a ‘what if?’ and really get the ball rolling. What if Jason was a holiday rep in the present day (2003) and what if he worked for Sargo Holidays (Sensational And Relaxing Getaways Overseas), and what if Sargo only catered for the elderly, and what if… And so on.
Now then, years and years ago I was working on an idea for a story that was a bit of a cross between ‘The 39 steps’ and ‘Tales of the City’ if you can imagine such a crossbreed. It was all to do with smuggling codes and a drag queen defeating the rise of fascism in Amsterdam in 1995. Understandably, I put it away in a bottom draw for a long time. But the code idea stayed with me and, to be exact, a musical code. What if musical notes could be interpreted as letters? What could a piece of music say?
Anyway, it all got thrown in together and came out as: a young holiday rep working on Symi has a group of odd pensioners, including his grandmother, to look after during a very difficult week. Grandmother brings an heirloom which starts the group off on a treasure hunt for the Golden Fleece. But where and what is it? The answer is found by following a piece of musical code written a hundred or more years before.
And so we head off into a slightly camp romp (lots of theatre gags and references) as the group travel across Symi to search for The Golden Fleece. There are many hidden, and some more obvious, references to the original Myth: Castor and Pollux become Cassie and Polly, two old ‘theatricals’, for example, the grandmother’s name is an anagram of Hera, and so on. So, for fans of the original myth there’s plenty to figure out, for fans of code breaking there’s a riddle to solve, for fans of Symi there is some accurate history (the story takes place in the present, the late 19th century and during World War II, and a lot of that research came from Hugo), and there are also a few local characters popping up under different names.
So, if you, or someone you now, likes comedy, Greek myths, adventure stories, treasure hunts and reading, then Jason and the Sargonauts would go well wrapped up and under a Christmas tree. (As long as it was eventually opened and read.)
You can order copies of Jason and the Sargonauts here.
“This is Dan Brown meets Whitehall Farce with a bit of education about Symi’s history thrown in for good measure. Set on the Greek island of Symi, it’s a fast paced whodunnit with lots of laughs and loads of page turning moments. Yes, it was hard to put down.”
“This books deserves a large audience and stands up there with the best novels about contemporary Greece.” Amazon review
