Contemporary Authors

• Athenian Blues - 2017 Bitter Lemon Press, London, United Kingdom

• Fantastic Fiction - https://www.fantasticfiction.com/k/pol-koutsakis/

  Pol Koutsakis
  Greece (1974 - )

  Pol Koutsakis writes novels, plays and screenplays. He was born in 1974. Until May 2006 he lived in Chania, in Western Crete, then lived for three years in Ontario, Canada, with his wife and daughter. At the end of December 2008, Pol returned to Chania only to emigrate again in 2016, this time to Perth, Australia. Pol teaches computer engineering in Perth when he is not writing crime novels or plays. He won the National award for best Greek play in 2007 by the Greek Ministry of Culture, and the National award for second best Greek play in 2005. Athenian Blues is his first novel to be translated into English. Baby Blue, the sequel to Athenian Blues, is expected to be published by Bitter Lemon Press in 2017.

• Bitter Lemon Press - https://www.bitterlemonpress.com/collections/pol-koutsakis

  POL KOUTSAKIS
  Pol Koutsakis, born in Crete in 1974, writes novels, plays and screenplays. Athenian Blues is his first novel to be translated into English. Baby Blue, the sequel to Athenian Blues, is expected to be published by Bitter Lemon Press in 2018.

• Pol Koutsakis Home Page - http://www.polkoutsakis.com/bio.html

  Pol (Polychronis) Koutsakis writes novels, plays and screenplays. He was born in 1974. Until May 2006 he lived in Greece, in the beautiful city of Chania, on the west end of the island of Crete, with a woman he never dreamed existed and with an adorably stupid dog.
  He then lived for three years in Ontario, Canada, near Niagara Falls, with his wife and daughter, but without the dog, who was too sentimentally attached to Chania to leave. Anyone who's ever been in Chania will not blame the dog. At the end of December 2008, Pol and his family returned to Chania. The dog was there, waiting for them.

  Since January 2016, Pol lives with his wife, daughter and son in Perth, Australia, right by the Indian Ocean.

  Pol won the National Award for best Greek play in 2007 by the Greek Ministry of Culture, for his play The Rotation System. Other plays of his have been staged and won awards in New York and other cities in the United States, in the UK and in Greece (more details in "Plays").

  ATHENIAN BLUES, Pol's first novel featuring the conscientious caretaker (i.e., hitman) Stratos Gazis was published by Bitter Lemon Press in 2017 in the UK, USA and Australia. The novel was also published in Greece, by Patakis Publications.
  BABY BLUE, the second novel in the Stratos Gazis series, will be published in 2018. Both novels take place in Athens, during the Greek Crisis.

  Pol's previous novel, "WITH YOU GONE" was published in October 2016 by Patakis Publications in Greece. It is the 3rd novel of the YA thriller "Trilogy of Crete". The first two novels of the trilogy are A TIME FOR HEROEShand JUST ONE BREATH which won the award of best YA novel of the year in Greece in the literary magazine's "The Reader" annual awards.
  His novel WHEN HE WAS HAPPY was released in March 2013. It is based on his award-winning play of the same title. The novel focuses on the personal relationships, tragedies, betrayals and triumphs of Eleftherios Venizelos (the most important Greek politician of the 20th century) and how they influenced his political career and the modern history of Greece.

  His other books are:

  FOR ALL TIME- play, One Act Play Depot Editions, Canada, 2012 (in the three-play collection GRIST FOR THE MILL).
  JACK- play, One Act Play Depot Editions, Canada, 2010 (in the three-play collection LEFT COLD).
  RIPVAN -play, One Act Play Depot editions, Canada, 2007
  THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY -novel, Minoas editions, Greece, 2007
  NAUGHTY CATS- play, One Act Play Depot Editions, Canada, 2005 (in the three-play collection AH, HERE COMES GODOT NOW).
  TIME ACROBATS -novel, Minoas editions, Greece, 2005
  ONLY ONE -play, One Act Play Depot editions, Canada, 2004
  BOGEY -play, One Act Play Depot editions, Canada, 2002
  NOT THIS TIME, BABY -novel, Enalios editions, Greece, 2000
  THE MYTH-MAKER -poems, Gavriilidis editions, Greece, 2000
  TO BURN A FLAG -novel, Modern times editions, Greece, 1998

  Pol translated Emily Giffin's international bestseller "Something Borrowed" in Greek, for Minoas Editions.
  The publication of the novel on May 12, 2011 coincided with the movie premiere. This is the link for the Greek edition of the book.

Koutsakis, Pol: ATHENIAN BLUES
Kirkus Reviews.
(Feb. 1, 2017):
COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Koutsakis, Pol ATHENIAN BLUES Bitter Lemon Press (Adult Fiction) $14.95 4, 11 ISBN: 978-1-908524-76-8
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."
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Koutsakis, Pol: ATHENIAN BLUES." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Feb. 2017. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA479234792&it=r&asid=f77841ae52b424f8f1fe8c2fe5a4531e.
Accessed 8 Oct. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A479234792
10/8/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1507505884816 2/2
Athenian Blues
Publishers Weekly.
264.6 (Feb. 6, 2017): p48.
COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Athenian Blues
Pol Koutsakis, trans. from the Greek by the author. Bitter Lemon, $14.95 trade paper
(256p) ISBN 978-1-908524-76-8
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. (Apr.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Athenian Blues." Publishers Weekly, 6 Feb. 2017, p. 48. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA480593838&it=r&asid=5e69647f0e939eee8bbc74ca4ed45baf.
Accessed 8 Oct. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A480593838

• European Literature Network
  http://www.eurolitnetwork.com/%E2%80%8Erivetingreviews-max-easterman-reviews-athenian-blues-by-pol-koutsakis/
  Word count: 715

  #‎RivetingReviews: Max Easterman reviews ATHENIAN BLUES by Pol Koutsakis
  APR 12, 2017 • NO COMMENTS

  Given the past few years of turmoil in Greece, it’s surprising that there hasn’t been a spate of crime novels flowing from what could easily be described as the modern cradle, not of democracy, but of economic and political anarchy (it’s interesting, isn’t it, that the terminology of politics is so heavily derived from Greek!). Be that as it may, Pol Koutsakis – an award-winning playwright as well as a novelist, who has also translated his book into English – has come up with a fiendishly original twist on the crime genre.

  Stratos Gazis is what no doubt every Greek longs for: a problem-solver, a wand-waver who, for the right price, will make anything and everything bad disappear, so that life can resume its natural and proper course. For the average Greek, of course, the price is the catch: Gazis only works for money, big money, and what he ‘makes disappear’ is people: people who get in the way, disturb a good night’s sleep and generally mess up one’s life.

  But, being Greek, he is also contrary: a contract-killer who only takes out those he thinks are the really bad guys, a problem-solver who only takes on jobs, where he is sure the problem-makers deserve their fate, even if his clients are equally distasteful.

  My potential employers have to give me a good reason…and what they say has to be confirmed by my own research…I am a caretaker with a conscience. And if I expected to find real ladies and gents to pay me to kill, I’d have to find another profession…

  There’s a dash of the Philip Marlowe in Stratos Gazis: world-weary, cynical, wise-cracking – I’m a kind of social worker, except I get properly paid – but also precisely the type Marlowe would have chased, fought and cut down, even though Gazis might in the end have been the one who got away. For his great strength is not, as he puts it, talent, but method – meticulous planning, harvesting every scrap of information, and that includes on his clients as well as their intended victims…and the right back-up: from three old friends, Drag and Teri and Maria, who are, respectively, a cop, a trans-gender bisexual sex worker and the love of Gazis’ life. Athos, Porthos and Aramis they are not, but they work in pretty much the same way!

  Gazis’ research leads him into a tangle of lies and half-truths:
  So many different versions of the truth. Almost a joke. Good liars spice their lies with truth to make them more convincing. We were dealing with some pretty bad liars.

  These bad liars are a husband and wife, who see events from totally different perspectives and who each wants rid of the other…Aliki, the actor and former model, whom three out of four Greek men rate as the most desirable woman in the country, who …captures everyone around her… and who claims her husband has twice tried to kill her. And Vassilis, …one of the best-loved men in Greece. The invincible lawyer…not one bad word had been said about him…not even in the tabloids. And so Gazis, unable to decide which of them to believe, sets out in search of the truth. There’s violence à-go-go, guns at his head and as people either drop like flies or just disappear, he realises ever more clearly that truth is only relative:
  The older you get, the more you can be really sure of just one thing: you’ll never really understand people.

  Greece’s economic chaos and social disruption are the backdrop to this racy story, whose twists and turns will keep you riveted to the end; to survive the turmoil, you have to be either wealthy or be able to cunningly bend the rules – or preferably both. To judge by his English translation, Pol Koutsakis must be a terrific writer in his native language. His second Stratos Gazis mystery, Baby Blue, will be published next year by Bitter Lemon. I can’t wait.

  Reviewed by Max Easterman

• Crime Review
  http://crimereview.co.uk/page.php/review/4420
  Word count: 560

  Athenian Blues
  by Pol Koutsakis

  Contract killer Stratos Gazis is contacted by the beautiful actress Aliki: her husband beats her, and she wants him dead. Stratos decides to do a little investigating before he accepts the job.

  Review

  Modern-day Athenian Stratos Gazis is a hit-man for hire, or caretaker as he prefers to be called, but before he takes a contract he likes to know all the relevant facts. So when he receives a request from Aliki, one half of Greece’s most glamorous couple, to kill her husband, he does some checking. For one thing, Vassilis the spouse is a top lawyer, often in the news for his high-profile cases.

  Unfortunately, the case quickly becomes more complicated. Immediately after Stratos’ meeting with Aliki, a woman friend and physical match through repeated facial surgery is gunned down in Aliki’s car, possibly evidence that Vassilis is seeking to kill his wife, as she alleges. Vassilis, when interviewed, says that Aliki has been under the care of psychiatrists and repeatedly hospitalised for self-harming.

  Stratos has two friends to help him make sense of what is going on, both companions since their school days: Teri, a transgender sex worker, and Drag, a police detective. While at first sight inevitably bound for professional conflict, their long-standing friendship enables them to find ways to be mutually supportive. Another person in their lives is Maria, Stratos’ landlord and lover, with whom Drag is also in love.

  Over the next few days Stratos criss-crosses Athens interviewing anyone who can help him determine the truth behind all the assertions he has been given. Amongst these are Angelino, who lives as a down-and-out in Omonia Square but has his finger on the pulse and knows stuff that the indolent police do not. Stratos gets the answers he needs very late, in a dramatic finale.

  This is the first in a series starring Stratos, and presumably his friends and his way of working will follow the pattern established here. For a killer the protagonist has a surprisingly moral way of looking at things, which makes him more sympathetic than might be considered realistic. He occasionally comes out with quotes from obscure Hollywood films, from some despised anti-hero, which gives a clue as to his thinking.

  He is also prone to acerbic comments about the life he sees around him: the poor motivation of the police, the ‘old custom of non cooperation between the municipal and state services’, the effect of the financial crisis and the unenviable lot of Bulgarian, and now North African, immigrants, all come in for cynical asides. A certain amount about local place names, and food, all add to the local colour.

  The book was originally written in Greek but translated by the author, very competently. There is plenty of action and all the characters have a sense of drama about them. My only reservation is that they are a bit too exciting, like Stratos himself and his occupation, something which probably calls for a very low profile if you hope to stay active for very long.

  Reviewed 18 February 2017 by Chris Roberts

  Chris Roberts is a retired manager of shopping centres in Hong Kong, and now lives in Bristol, primarily reading.

• Reviews by Amos Lassen
  http://reviewsbyamoslassen.com/?p=56026
  Word count: 670

  “Athenian Blues” by Pol Koutsakis— A New Detective Series

  Koutsakis, Pol. “Athenian Blues’, Bitter Lemon, 2017.
  A New Detective Series
  Amos Lassen

  Stratos Gazis has been hired by an actress to do a hit on her husband but what she does not know is that Gazis was already in working for her husband who wants to know who wants his wife killed. unbeknownst to her is that her husband has hired him to find out who wants to kill his wife. It also just so happens that Gazis’ best friend is a top cop and both she and Gazis are in love with the same woman.

  Pol Koutsakis makes his English-language debut with this crime novel and his first to feature Stratos Gazis, a virtuous hit man who claims to kill only people who deserve it. When supermodel Aliki Stylianou hires Stratos to kill her jealous husband, a celebrity super-lawyer Vassilis Stathopoulos, because she is afraid that he will murder her. Aliki says that during their three-year marriage, Vassilis has beaten her on a regular basis and sent her twice to the hospital with fractures. When Stratos finally meets Vassilis, the lawyer offers to employ Stratos to protect his deluded wife from an unknown killer. We can see already see that is going be a convoluted plot but it all comes together and makes sense. With the help his three best friends, (one of whom is homicide detective Costas Dragas), Stratos tries to maneuver the lies and delusions in this case when people who are not directly involved with what it happening begin dying violently, while people who should be on the periphery of the case start dying violently. We see that Stratos’ view of life has been shaped, to a degree, by American noir films. This puts me at a bit of disadvantage in summarizing the book in that I could reveal something about the story. What I can say is that moral ambiguity plays a large part in what happens here.

  Set in Athens, Greece today we meet the very cool professional hit man right away. The situation he finds himself is awkward since he has been hired by both husband and wife of the same family. There is also a subplot dealing with Gazis and his best friend being in love with the same woman, Maria, and Teri, a transgender friend has also just found love. I suspect we will be having more transgender characters now that they have become so visible and left the closet behind. At the same time, Greece and especially Athens are in the midst of financial crises.

  Here is a novel with as many plot-twists as dead people. Gazis does not consider himself to be a hit man and he hates being called a contract killer. He is, as he says, a “conscientious fixer”. The problems that he fixes, however, as rarely spoken of aloud but he can fix what many others cannot and there are those who are willing to pay high prices for his services. mentioned in whispers. That very few can fix. Because of the economic crisis going on in Greece, life in Athens is harder to deal with than usual especially since Gazis a strict moral code and is about to become involved in what will be, in all probability, the highest profile case of his career. As he and his three friends get to work they learn that truth is relative. He finds that truth in broken lovers and broken families.

  He is caught between the most beloved lawyer in Greece who is known as “the guardian of the poor,” and his actress wife and the most beautiful desirable woman in the country. The fact that are married to each other is a complication as is that they are both in need of his services. More than that I cannot say except to be prepared to turn pages as quickly as possible.

• Manhattan Book Review
  https://manhattanbookreview.com/product/athenian-blues/
  Word count: 239

  Sometimes the stars align and you find a real gem of a book. That’s how I felt about Athenian Blues. In this tale set in Greece, we meet Stratos Gazis, who likes to refer to himself as a caretaker. He can’t stand to be called a hitman. In his mind, he is providing justice for both his victims and his clients. So, when a famous actress, Aliki Stylianou, tries to hire him to kill her abusive husband, he wants to know more before taking the case. After all, her husband is one of Athens’ most respected lawyers.

  Things take an unexpected turn when an attempt is made on Aliki’s life and she goes into hiding. Her husband wants to hire Gazis to find her. Gazis isn’t sure which party to believe. Is the husband abusive and does he want to kill his wife, or is she making it all up? As the story develops and Gazis, with the help of his friends, tries to piece together the complex ties between husband and wife, he finds more questions than answers. As more secrets emerge, Gazis is more determined than ever to find Aliki. If only he’d known he would be putting himself and his closest friends in danger.

  Pol Koutsakis is a fascinating storyteller able to transport readers right into Stratos Gazis’ world.

  Reviewed By: Susan Miller