Murder in Byzantium. By Julia Kristeva. Translated by C. Jon Delogu.

Abstract

Julia Kristeva has already published three fictional works—The Samurai (1992), The Old Man and the Wolves (1994) and Possessions (1996). This is her fourth novel, published in French in 2004 and by Columbia University Press in English in 2006. The crime novel format is one she has chosen before in Possessions, where the character, Stephanie Delacour, special foreign correspondent for Evénemént de Paris, makes an earlier appearance in the same role of investigator/some-time detective, assisting in tracking down the perpetrator of a gruesome murder. The story Kristeva constructs is a rich one: Stephanie Delacour is sent from Paris to the mythic country of Santa Varvara to report on a serial murderer who is targeting members of a mafia-like organisation: the New Pantheon. This powerful, secretive and sinister sect is known to be contributing to the country's political violence and corruption, runaway inflation and thriving drug culture....