Strangers in Company

When Marian Frenche, an attractive divorcée, signs on s companion to rich, unstable young Stella Marten for a tour of classical Greece, it is as much to exorcise her personal demons as it is to bolster her dwindling financial re-sources. With Stella apparently in equally perilous command of herself — flirtatious at one moment, moody, hostile, and withdrawn the next - it is a clear case of the blind leading the blind. And it is right into a deadly maze of political intrigue and murder. No sooner have they set out on their pilgrimage to the legend-haunted shrines — Sounion, Eleusis, Epidaurus, Tiryns, Delphi — than the tour begins to be plagued by a series of so-called accidents. In the sinister grotto at Agamemnon's palace, a tourist falls to her death. A gentle Englishwoman with an unfortunate tendency to wander off on her own dies in another mysterious tragedy. And at Mistra the American classics professor, Thor Edvardson, who has taken a special interest in Marian narrowly escapes being hurled from a cliff. Suddenly Marian awakens from the trance in which her own painful memories have imprisoned her to discover the single, terrifying link between these bizarre "accidents". But the web of danger winds ever more tightly around her as she finds herself increasingly drawn to the compelling, yet mystifying Professor Edvardson. For the professor, like the rest of Marian's tour-mates, is not what he seems. Jane Aiken Hodge has been compared by the critics to Helen Maclnnes and Mary Stewart, and STRANGERS IN COMPANY reveals her writing at the top of her form to create a stunning novel of ro-mance and suspense.