Road to Omalos: A Novel

Marilyn Jax
Beaver’s Pond Press (2010)
ISBN 9781592983292
Reviewed by Leslie Granier for Reader Views (1/11)


An explosion at a plastics factory resulted in the death of one of its employees - the owner’s only child.  The suspect in the crime is George Zenonakis, a member of a powerful and much-feared Greek family.  Investigators Claire Caswell and Guy Lombard are hired to find Zenonakis and bring him back to the United States.  However, they are not the only ones looking for him.  Four vigilantes want to track him down and exert their own brand of justice against Zenonakis for his past crimes.  As both teams race to locate him, they receive little help from the local people, making their task even more difficult.

“Road to Omalos” started off great.  There was a lot of action in the buildup to the hunt for Zenonakis.  A good deal of information was provided about the main characters.  However, once the story moved to Crete, things slowed down tremendously.  The reader received an in-depth education about the history of the island and the process of making olive oil, but this only served to detract from the story.  Things picked up again as the story reached its climax, but at this point I had already figured out most of the secrets the author had not yet revealed.

I had mixed feelings about the characters.  Claire and Guy had a great chemistry between them, but they were nowhere near as good as the “crack investigators” they were made out to be.  I actually preferred the scenes with the vigilantes.  I thought the story of how they formed and why they acted in the ways they did was intriguing.  Learning about their different personalities and callings in their lives was interesting.  The background given about Zenonakis and why his life turned out how it did made me feel more sympathetic to his plight.

“Road to Omalos” was written for men and women who enjoy books with action and suspense.  The idea for the plot was very creative, but it really needed to be developed more.  The author used a descriptive style when discussing the surroundings, which gave me a good picture of the lifestyle and environment experienced by the Cretan people.

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