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Craig Holden's newest novel, his sixth, is a study in tension and character set in the back alleys and trains and cheap hotels of 80s Europe. It is Holden's leanest and sharpest work to date.
Matala sets up as a simple con -- a bored young American woman, Darcy Arlen, who’s in Rome as part of a pre-arranged tour of Europe, accepts a date with Will, a rough but beautiful young man she’s run into, unaware that she’s stepping into a scam set up by him and his older partner, Justine.
But after they manage to separate her from her group and get her to Venice, Will and Justine realize that Darcy isn’t exactly what she's seemed either, and that even as they’ve been conning her, she’s been returning the favor.
By the time the three of them embark on a dangerous journey to the Meditteranean, Darcy has already begun to insert herself into both the personal and professional relationship between Justine and Will. This is a love triangle, a smuggling adventure, and ultimately the story of a journey of life-changing self-knowledge for these three people that ends, and perhaps begins again, beneath the spectacular carved cliffs of the place known as Matala.
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