Review: Baby Blue by Pol Koutsakis tr. Anne-Marie Stanton-Ife

Baby Blue by Pol Koutsakis translated by Anne-Marie Stanton-Ife, June 2018, 292 pages, Bitter Lemon Press, ISBN: 190852491X

Reviewed by Lynn Harvey.
(Read more of Lynn's reviews for Euro Crime here.)

We always let down those we love most. And we always take the gamble that they’ll understand.

A spring night in Athens:
When a friend rings Stratos Gazis asking for his help, Stratos is surprised. After all it’s Stratos who usually calls him, not the other way round. Stratos immediately sets out into the Athenian traffic despite longing to see his current and childhood love Maria as they had arranged. At six foot three and 220 pounds Gazis draws attention and as he dislikes drawing anyone’s attention his route is carefully planned. Stratos is a “caretaker”; he takes care of people with a gun. But he doesn’t think of himself as a hit man. He does his research and if he considers the target doesn’t deserve to die then he won’t take the job. That’s his deal. He’s the best and he can afford rules.

Angelino is the old friend from the streets, an information dealer, who has asked for Stratos’ help and tonight Stratos finds himself a world away from the decrepit square Angelino used to live on with his ancient dog Hector. Stratos is buzzed into a graffiti-less neoclassical building past security guards and into a spacious sitting room filled with twenty guests at least. Angelino is hosting an investors evening. All of the guests are entranced by a young girl performing incredible feats of conjuring and magic. This is Emma; prodigiously talented, beautiful – and blind. Emma is the investment in question. To be precise, her bid to take part in the Magic Olympics. Winner takes Vegas and New York. And it is also Emma who is asking for help. She tells Stratos that when she was little she was rescued from an orphanage by a journalist. He brought her up and she regarded him as her father. They ended up living on the streets after he left his job. Three years ago he was murdered – tortured and shot. It was Emma who found his body. Now she wants Stratos to find her father’s murderer. She wants revenge.

It’s after midnight when Stratos hurries back to Maria. He spots a familiar car parked on his street. It belongs to another old friend, his closest, Kostas Dragas known as Drag, a famous homicide cop with the Athens police. Not the usual companion for a “caretaker” but again … it goes back to tough childhoods. Drag wants to discuss his latest case with Stratos: a series of killings. All of the victims had been spotlighted by a local TV station; named, shamed and identified as paedophiles. All were tortured and shot in the same distinctive manner and it looks professional. Drag agrees that it’s not Stratos. Still, he wants his view on the killings. In return Drag requests the coroner’s report on Emma’s father. But when the report comes back Stratos is struck by its details. The body of Emma’s so-called father bore all the same hallmarks as those of the dead paedophiles...

Pol Koutsakis is a Greek writer and playwrite and BABY BLUE is his second crime novel narrated by the character Stratos Gazis. (The first is ATHENIAN BLUES.) In this story Stratos takes on a convoluted, action-filled hunt for both the killer of Emma’s protector and the Avenger, a serial killer of paedophiles. He also juggles with his feelings for Maria; his knowledge of the danger that his chosen role brings her. The novel slices through modern day Athens from bottom to top; from the decay and corruption of modern Athenian poverty to the luxury and power of those who still “have”. According to writer Pol Koutsakis this is what fuelled him to create the ambiguous character of Stratos, a hard-bitten hero who straddles a grey area of morality. I do wonder if ambiguity of character is allowed to stretch to the women in Stratos’ world; they do seem to be either saints or sinners in his eyes. But I'm being rather tough. This is the world of Noir films that Stratos loves and frequently quotes. And in his noir world Stratos is much more Robert Mitchum than Bogart; tall, strong, menacing, he is effective, he does the job. I just miss a touch of Chandler wit to soften the bullet, if you pardon my phrase.

Modern Athens noir. Tough and unforgiving.

Lynn Harvey, July 2018

Review: The Greek Wall by Nicolas Verdan tr. W Donald Wilson

The Greek Wall by Nicolas Verdan translated by W Donald Wilson, January 2018, 240 pages, Bitter Lemon Press, ISBN: 1908524855

Reviewed by Lynn Harvey.
(Read more of Lynn's reviews for Euro Crime here.)

Prologue: It is moonless and dark. A pink neon sign, “Eros”, marks the brothel where the colonel has chosen to meet him. He parks, wondering if here, as well as meeting the colonel, he might be able to put the ghost of his lover to rest. But it is so dark that he cannot even find the building’s entrance. Blundering around he is tripped by, of all things, a line of washing. He stumbles back up onto his feet as a yard light goes on and he sees a young woman approaching. As she gets closer to him, he notices her blank stare. He also realises that she is hefting an axe upon her shoulder. He shouts out, “No! No!” as the axe falls.

Athens, December 2010: Agent Evangelos stands in front of his favourite jazz bar at two in the morning and wonders just what a severed head looks like. The case is his, according to the phone call, so he must leave Athens for the Thrace border – the Evros delta, the Schengen area. Evangelos had said into the phone: “A dead body? So what? They fish dead bodies out of the Evros all the time. Why us?” But it isn’t exactly a dead body. It’s just the head. And not that of a migrant, It’s a Westerner’s head – in Frontex patrolled border country. The job must go to Athens, to the National Intelligence Service.

Evangelos is tired. He is always tired these days. Three years off retirement but with the national debt crisis … what were the chances for his pension? Now he will be facing meetings, reports, dealing with the Turkish authorities, with Frontex. How do you deal with Frontex? They’re headquartered in Warsaw. Evangelos thinks this severed head bodes no good for him. He will be squeezed into a tight place. Told to keep a lid on it. So he heads not to his own home but to the empty house of his dead parents to rest before the flight to Thrace tomorrow afternoon. As he stretches out on the sofa his phone buzzes. His daughter’s child has been born, a girl. Evangelos is a grandfather.

Evangelos stops off to visit the newborn on the way to the airport. He knows that his old colleague and driver will not say anything about the unofficial stop. But today Evangelos cannot help recalling other drivers, silent ones; other meetings, meetings where he was as good as told to ignore the implications of a wealthy businessman, a powerful political donor with past links to the Communist bloc. Put a lid on it Evangelos. And this morning’s meeting? Go there, identify the dead man and … put a lid on it. The border is a problem. But Greece will be building a wall, a barbed wire fence, and then Europe will shut up about Greece’s “inability” to secure its borders. A nurse interrupts Evangelos and his preoccupations. The baby brings a smile to his face...

Set in 2010, THE GREEK WALL bursts into dramatic action in the marshy Evros river country of Greece’s north-eastern border with Turkey. It’s a landscape already patrolled by the European Union Frontex forces despite migration not yet having reached the crisis point that draws the eyes of the outside world. A gruesome murder outside a squalid brothel is the fuse which lights up a mess of corruption, sex-trafficking and politics. And the politics of money cannot be far away: 2010 is crisis time for Greece’s national debt and its struggle with “the Troika” of the European Commission, European Central Bank and the IMF.

Verdan draws on his own journalistic knowledge in lifting the lid off the corrupted stew-pot of contemporary events as seen through the eyes of both Evangelos, a weary intelligence officer, and Nikos, a German-Greek businessman looking to seal an important business deal. Verdan’s observant, fresh, descriptive powers paint the setting of contemporary Greece and its people vividly. If I have any doubts about the story it is in the detailed exploration of the relationship between Nikos and Christine which seems to distract almost from the direct thread of the plot. But as I have remarked before I am a bit of a hard-boiled girl. The plot definitely contains a strong punch of mystery and suspense and its hints of an ambiguous past for Evangelos also gives strong potential for more stories to come. If you like the flavour of contemporary politics in your crime reading (as I do), you will find at THE GREEK WALL a meeting of Europe and Greece seen through Greek eyes, a vantage point I haven’t come across before in a crime thriller. I’d certainly like to read more.

Swiss-Greek journalist and novelist Nicolas Verdan divides his time between Switzerland and Greece. His novels, of which THE GREEK WALL is the first to be published in English, have received awards in both France and Switzerland.

W. Donald Wilson is a Canadian translator several of whose translations have been published by Bitter Lemon Press.

Lynn Harvey, February 2018

Review: Devil of Delphi by Jeffrey Siger

Devil of Delphi by Jeffrey Siger, October 2015, 276 pages, Poisoned Pen Press, ISBN: 1464204322

Reviewed by Terry Halligan.
(Read more of Terry's reviews for Euro Crime here.)

Delphi once stood at the centre of the world, a mountainous, verdant home to the gods, where kings and warriors journeyed to hear its Oracle speak. The Oracle embodied the decree of the gods―or at least the word of Apollo. To disobey risked…everything.

Young Athenian Kharon chooses modern Delphi to rebuild his life among its rolling hills and endless olive groves. But his dark past is too celebrated, and his assassin’s skills so in demand, that his fate does not rest entirely in his own hands. Greece is being flooded with bomba, counterfeits of the most celebrated alcoholic beverages and wine brands. The legitimate annual trillion-dollar world market is in peril. So, too, are consumers―someone is not just counterfeiting booze, but adulterating it, often with poisonous substances. Who is masterminding this immensely lucrative conspiracy?

Kharon learns who when the ruthless criminal gives him no choice but to serve her. Her decrees are as absolute as the Oracle’s, and as fearsomely punished. Kharon agrees, but dictates his own payoff. And his own methods, which allow his targets some choice in the outcomes.

When Kharon unexpectedly shoots a member of one of Greece’s richest, most feared families, he draws Chief Inspector Andreas Kaldis into the eye of a political and media firestorm threatening to bring down Greece’s government.

This is the seventh novel by this very gifted author about DCI Andreas Kaldis and his team of Athenian detectives and the book is as well crafted as ever; we are not only reading about Andreas Kaldis, but his wife and four-year-old son, and his team of detectives and their individual characteristics, much in the same tradition as the late Ed McBain describes the detectives of his 87th Precinct series.

The author has a light touch and there is a lot of very wry humour in his books to offset the often very dark violence. Siger, spends some time each year in Greece and also time in his other home in the US and is able to comment on the political and economic troubles that have faced Greek society over recent years and reveals some of the creative ways the Greeks have of avoiding personal taxation!

The case is investigated by checking out many different lines of enquiry before reaching the exciting conclusion. There are many twists and turns and assorted red herrings before the end of the story. Of all of the books that he has written, this one, I believe, was the author's best; with so many changes of direction in the fast paced but highly imaginative and tightly plotted story, one could not guess what would happen next.

Chief Inspector Andreas Kaldis is an exciting, intriguing and well drawn creation and we learn a little bit more about him from book to book. The books are all very gripping and whilst they are very evocative of the rustic tourist landscape of Greece, they are also extremely readable examples of the best international police procedurals, similar perhaps to those of authors such as Donna Leon and Joseph Wambaugh. I look forward to reading his next one.

Highly recommended.

Terry Halligan, November 2015.

Greece is the word

There're quite a few crime novels being published (or re-issued) this year set in Greece including Euro Crime's current competition prize, The Black Monastery by Stav Sherez (competition is open world-wide).

January saw the publication of Jeffrey Siger's Murder in Mykonos:

Synopsis: A young woman on holiday to Mykonos, the most famous of Greece's Aegean Cycladic islands, simply disappears off the face of the earth. And no one notices.

That is, until a body turns up on a pile of bones under the floor of a remote mountain church. Then the island's new police chief - the young, politically incorrect, former Athens homicide detective Andreas Kaldis - starts finding bodies, bones, and suspects almost everywhere he looks.

Teamed with the canny, nearly-retired local homicide chief, Andreas tries to find the killer before the media can destroy the island's fabled reputation with a barrage of world-wide attention on a mystery that's haunted Mykonos undetected for decades.

Just when it seems things can't get any worse, another young woman disappears and political niceties no longer matter. With the investigation now a rescue operation, Andreas finds himself plunging into ancient myths and forgotten island places, racing against a killer intent on claiming a new victim who is herself determined to outstep him.

Yesterday saw the re-issue by MIRA of the Alex Mavros trilogy by Paul Johnston. NB. The first book in the series has been retitled to Crying Blue Murder (formally A Deeper Shade of Blue).

Synopsis: Murder in paradise. American tourist Rosa Ozal has disappeared from an idyllic Greek island and investigator Alec Mavros is hired to trace her. Half-Greek, half-Scots, Mavros is in the perfect position to play the innocent holidaymaker.Mavros soon discovers there's more going on than meets the eye. Two young islanders have ended up in the nets of a local fishing boat; a British journalist has left the island without warning and the resident millionaire and museum owner seems to be very ill at ease. In a race to stop a terrible crime being repeated, Mavros must break through the whitewashed walls of silence to uncover the secrets and lies at the heart of this island paradise.


At the end of the month, Frances Lloyd's first crime novel, Nemesis of the Dead will be published by Robert Hale.

Synopsis: Ten holidaymakers are bound for Katastrophos, a tiny Greek Island steeped in superstition and ancient myth. Ten people whose lives are about to change forever, because one of them is planning a ruthless murder. Detective Inspector Jack Dawes of the Murder Squad is working undercover to prevent it, and takes his wife, Corrie, to the island, ostensibly on a belated honeymoon. Mayhem ensues when a storm destroys the island's primitive communications, cutting it off from civilisation. This, and a bizarre island ritual, provide the murderer with a perfect opportunity - but fate intervenes. Finally, time runs out and a deadly battle of wits develops between policeman and killer. It is Nemesis, dark-faced goddess of justice, who ends it with her powerful spirit of vengeance and retribution. Of the ten who arrive on Katastrophos, not all will return home.

July sees the third in the Greek Detective series from Anne Zouroudi, The Doctor of Thessaly.

Synopsis: A jilted bride weeps on an empty beach, a local doctor is attacked in an isolated churchyard - trouble’s come at a bad time to the backwatered village of Morfi, just as the community is making headlines with a visit from a national government minister. Fortunately, where there’s trouble there’s Hermes Diaktoros, the mysterious fat man whose tennis shoes are always pristine and whose investigative methods are always unorthodox.

In the latest instalment of the Mysteries of the Greek Detective, Hermes must solve a brutal crime that the victim does not seem to want solving, thwart the petty machinations of the town’s ex-mayor and his cronies and pour oil on the troubled waters of a sisters’ relationship.

And on 27 August, Arcadia is due to release Basic Shareholder by Petros Markaris the third in the Haritos series.

Synopsis: It's a very hot June when Commissar Kostas Haritos suddenly receives terrible news: the boat on which his daughter Katerina was travelling has been sequestrated by a terrorist commando. Moreover, his has to investigate the murder of an advertising model. Commissor Haritos must now keep cool to battle on two different fronts - the world of advertising and that of international terrorism.

Do let me know of any more new crime novels set in Greece, via the comments.