AustLit

'“So sweet, so calm, so unaffectedly natural… I’d nearly forgotten that the reason she had invited me there was to discuss how I would kill her husband.” 

'Stratos Gazis hates being called a contract killer. What he is, is a conscientious fixer. He fixes problems that are only mentioned in whispers. That very few can fix. Things that people are willing to pay handsomely to get done, without wanting to know about the small stuff - just that the job was carried out. Stratos is their man, provided that his meticulous research shows him that the targets deserve their fate. As he says, “I’m a kind of Robin Hood. I hunt down the villains. And I rob them. Of their lives.” 

'But now, in the midst of the Greek economic crisis and political turmoil, during a melancholy winter which makes life in Athens even more unbearable than usual, this film-noir loving assassin with the strict moral code is about to get involved in the most high-profile case of his contract killer career. He finds himself caught between the most beloved lawyer in Greece, known as “the guardian of the poor”, and his actress and model wife, the most desirable woman in the country. They are both in dire need of his killing services, but which one is telling the truth? 

'Helped by three childhood friends, Costas Dragas, a homicide cop, Teri, a transsexual high-class hooker and Maria, the passion of his life, he discovers that truth, in shattered loves and broken families, is, as ever, a relative thing. '  (Publication summary)

Stratos Gazis hates being called a hit man. What he is, is a conscientious fixer. He fixes problems that few can fix. Things that people are willing to pay handsomely to get done provided he concludes the targets deserve their fate. 

'The story centers around the blue-eyed orphan Emma, the "baby blue" of the title, a beautiful teenage girl with a talent for card tricks of exceptional sophistication - all the more impressive for her tender years and the blindness that has afflicted her since the age of eight. Emma and her adoptive father, a former investigative journalist, roam the streets of Athens together, earning enough to keep body and soul together by performing Chaplinesque sketches. 

'When the ex-journalist is brutally murdered, Angelino, a well-connected Athenian underworld figure, takes the girl under his wing and retains the services of Stratos to find her father's killers. Meanwhile, Costas Dragas, a top homicide cop and Gazis's best friend, has taken on the investigation of a spate of murders of pedophiles, and as usual, has gone to war with the media. It slowly emerges that their cases intersect and that corporate interests, more powerful than they could ever have imagined, lie behind the murders they both need to solve. 

'Through a combination of experience and the ability to read the ailing city, its residents and its streets with consummate skill, the case is solved, but not without some subliminal tutoring from a great classic of the cinema.'  (Publication summary)