Athenian Blues

February 6, 2017
Koutsakis makes his English-language debut with an intriguing crime novel, his first to star Stratos Gazis, a virtuous hit man who boasts of killing only people who deserve it. Glamorous supermodel Aliki Stylianou hires Stratos to kill her jealous husband, celebrity super-lawyer Vassilis Stathopoulos, before he can murder her. Aliki claims that during their three-year marriage Vassilis has regularly beaten her, sending her to the hospital twice with fractures. When Stratos finally meets Vassilis, the lawyer offers to employ Stratos to protect his deluded wife from an unknown killer. Aided by his three best friends, including homicide detective Costas Dragas, Stratos tries to cut through the tangle of lies and delusions, while people who should be on the periphery of the case start dying violently. American film noir shaped Stratos’s view of life, and Koutsakis effectively translates that half-lit, morally ambiguous milieu to seedy modern-day Athens. Noir fans will look forward to the next installment.

February 1, 2017
An unlikely Athens "caretaker" meets his match when both members of an estranged couple seek his help in a domestic dispute that turns homicidal.Vassilis Stathopoulos and Aliki Stylianou are quite a pair. He's a celebrated lawyer; she's a model-turned-television actress. She claims that the bruises on her body are from the beatings he's inflicted; he claims that she cuts herself. Or maybe, just maybe, they're badges of the couple's no-boundaries sex life. The one thing the two of them agree on is that someone's trying to kill her. Aliki, convinced that that someone is her husband, wants to hire Stratos Gazis to kill him first; Vassilis wants Stratos to protect Aliki from the killer by nailing him before he succeeds. Before he can decide which client he wants to accept, Stratos, who acutely observes that "at least one of them was lying. Maybe they both were," comes upon the corpse of Elsa Dalla, an untalented supporting player on Aliki's TV show, in Aliki's BMW. Clearly these are deep waters, and it's lucky that instead of diving into them alone, Stratos has help from his old friend Costas Dragas, an Athens homicide cop, and his even older friend Teri Berikis, a transgender prostitute. The trio will need all their varied skills to get to the bottom of the unexpectedly dark secret at the heart of the case. Koutsakis' first appearance in English translation is more interested in multiplying oddball suspects than in giving them anything to do. But it's hard to resist his hero, a freelance killer who describes himself as "a kind of social worker, except I get properly paid."

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March 1, 2017

Stratos Gazis has been officially dead for years, but the 35-year-old hit man hides in plain sight in Greece as "a caretaker." He only takes jobs in which the intended victim deserves to die. With his latest case, though, Stratos can't decide who is lying--the model who wants her wealthy husband killed, or the lawyer husband who claims he's trying to protect her. Stratos enlists his friends, including a police detective and a transgender sex worker, to help him discover the truth. If Stratos is going to take care of business, he'd better hit the right target. Like Jeffrey Siger with his "Chief Inspector Andreas Kaldis" series (Santorini Caesars), Koutsakis, a Greek novelist now living in Australia, draws on the troubled Greek economy and current political situation as background for this violent and gritty mystery. VERDICT With a narrator on the wrong side of the law who admires film noir, this dark novel will attract fans of international crime fiction with an edge. Admirers of Lawrence Block's "Hit Man" series may also want to try this book about a killer with a conscience.--LH

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