The owner of a hotel chain is found dead in a spa resort near Athens. An anonymous letter claims responsibility and accuses him of hypocrisy. Signed: ›The Army of National Idiots‹.
It is the first murder in a grotesque series. The accusation is always the same, but the victims could hardly be more different. Costas Haritos – a brand new proud grand- father – tries to track down the obscure fanatics.

The Greek crisis and its impact on the people – told and interpreted by Petros Markaris, one of the sharpest observers of Hellenic society. In twelve articles and an interview, he observes and commentates the new Greek tragedy, in expectation of the bitter end – and a new beginning. He saw the crisis coming. Even before the Olympic Games in Athens in 2004, at a time when the building boom seemed never-ending, Petros Markaris was already posing the following question in his novel ›Live!‹: And who is supposed to pay for all this? In his articles for German-speaking media such as ›Die Zeit‹ and the ›Süddeutsche Zeitung‹, he writes about big politics and little people, about perpetrators and victims, about Brussels, Berlin and Athens. They appear here in one volume for the first time, offer a comprehensive and multi-faceted picture of the situation.

Costas Haritos is a CID chief based in Athens. He is uncomfortably married, has one daughter and relaxes by reading dictionaries. Aggressive and pessimistic, he is not very likeable; the manner in which he treats his clients is certainly not to be commended. One evening he is called to the scene of a murder: A renowned TV journalist, Janna, has been killed in a broadcasting studio just as she was about to go on air with some sensational news. The killer must have known about her investigations and wanted to stop her making them public. The first of the novels featuring Inspector Haritos exposes the corruption that has pervaded both private and public life in Greece since the fall of the military dictatorship, the advent of a democratic government and the explosion of barely controlled private entrepreneurship.

Petros Markaris digs around in Greece's recent past – and unearths a lot of dirt. Are yesterday's heroes responsible for today's misery? Forty years after the uprising against the military dictatorship, someone wants to get what the vocal cries of the student movement promised all those years ago: bread, education, freedom. But the path is littered with corpses. Greece has returned to the drachma. Survival is the only priority: jobs are lost, wages unpaid – and a serial killer is targeting prominent leftwingers who shot up the career ladder after rising up against the military junta. Who is behind the killings? A right-wing extremist? Or someone seeking revenge for past transgressions? Inspector Haritos follows the killer's eloquent clues with his own special brand of stubbornness – despite the fact that he has had to make do without his own wages for the last three months.

Athens during the pandemic. The shops are shut and many people have been pushed to the brink, so it’s hardly surprising that even the elderly are taking their own lives. Yet when Costas Haritos hears that a ninety-year-old has written ›Long live the Suicide Movement!‹ in his note, his ears prick up. Is there more to his actions than just despair? Haritos investigates – and gets to know the city of Athens and its inhabitants’ spirit of resistance in a whole new light.

Greece is experiencing an unexpected economic upswing – but where is all the money coming from?

Inspector Costas Haritos’ tenth case: when investment is just another name for money laundering.

A triumph for the Athens police: a civil servant’s murder is solved in no time at all. But Inspector Haritos has his doubts. Just like everything around him is too good to be true: people are enjoying life as if there had never been a crisis. Katarina, too, the Inspector’s daughter, wants to buy an apartment now that credit is easy to obtain.
But the fast money takes its toll: The murder of the civil servant was only the beginning.

An earthquake on a Greek island: Some of the islanders are buried under the rubble, but a mysterious, long buried body resurfaces through the tectonic movement. Reason enough for Inspector Haritos to cut short his holiday in the Aegean and return to Athens with the body in tow. Another case is already waiting for him there: the murder of Koustas, unofficial king of the red-light district. Haritos buries himself in work, but soon he has to pay the price for not looking after himself: His heart goes on strike, and Haritos is taken to hospital. His only consolation: His daughter Katerina comes from Thessaloniki to be at his bedside. She too suffers from heart problems – if of a different kind …

Rich Greeks do not pay taxes. Poor Greeks are either outraged by that, or just despair about their own hopeless situation. But an unknown man does neither one nor the other: he takes action. With threatening letters, hemlock poison and arrows – in the name of the state. In crisis-shaken Athens, everything is upside down; the only place where things are calm is in the homicide division. There are no murders for miles around, just tedious paperwork. When a body is found on the ancient Kerameikos cemetery, Inspector Haritos is almost relieved. But not quite. He is under pressure: his boss has alerted him to the possibility of a promotion, so he has to avoid treading on anyone's toes. But Haritos is unable to avoid some uncomfortable questions. The dead man was a well-known surgeon who profited from mismanagement in the health care system. Everyone knew that. Even the anonymous tax collector, who has recently been blackmailing tax evaders – and, if necessary, resorting to ancient murder methods.

This case puts Costas Haritos to a difficult test. Recently promoted to Athens’ head of police, for the first time he isn’t investigating alone. Instead, the homicide department’s new leader, Antigone Ferlekis, is responsible for the case of the dead archaeologist. A case with great explosive potential, because behind it lurks a group of American investors who want to bring a lot of money to Attica. And money is always a good motive for murder.

What does a superintendent from Athens do in Istanbul? That question is also on the mind of Costas Haritos. Holidays have never been his cup of tea, and this time as for family reasons, they are not even exactly voluntary. But his police work soon catches up with the superintendent, freeing him from guided tours through Hagia Sophia and similarly useless activities. As a liaison officer to the Turkish Criminal Investigation Department, Costas Haritos is put on the case of a Greek lady in her nineties who by all appearances has killed her brother and fled to Istanbul – the city where she spent most of her life. It seems that this Maria Chambou has a few old scores to settle. On theTurkish side, Superintendent Murat Saglam is in charge of the case – a young colleague who was brought up in Germany and with whom Haritos soon forms a bond of mutual distrust.

Left-wing politics are carried solemnly to the grave, in a funeral procession through the streets of Athens. What looks like a carnival parade is in fact the start of a new protest movement: the poor, uniting to make their voices heard. 
Is the murderer of the foreign investors among their ranks? Detective Haritos investigates and pricks up his ears when he hears the song of money all over the city.

The novel on the financial crisis in Greece – from best-selling author Petros Markaris. Bitterly serious and fantastically funny. The crisis has brought Greece to a standstill. No-one is keeping to normal working hours, and there are debates and protests everywhere. Demonstrations jam the streets of central Athens more than the traffic ever did. Even the Haritos family need to tighten their belt. Costas and Adriani have just paid for their only daughter's wedding and bought a new car for the first time in thirty years – and now they have no idea how they are going to pay off the instalments. Then, when two bankers are gruesomely murdered in the space of a few days, the financial world goes on high alert. Especially as the media and police are not ruling out the possibility of a terrorist attack. The hate towards the financial world seems to grow and grow: Overnight, the city is plastered with stickers encouraging citizens to refuse to pay off their loans.

The German-Greek Andreas Makridis is found hanged in his Athens apartment. A short while later, a letter surfaces claiming that it was murder. Signed: The Greeks of the 1950s. What looks like a bad joke turns out to be deadly serious: further murders follow.
Who’s behind this ominous organisation? Crazy old individuals demanding a return to the values of days gone by? The new case leads Costas Haritos back and forth across a city, which is becoming more dangerous with every passing day. And the Commissioner discovers this on a personal level too: his daughter Katerina is attacked by a neo-Nazi of the Golden Dawn – in the city centre, in broad daylight.

Commissar Haritos would rather be out on the street with all the other Athenians, celebrating Greece's victory in the European football championships. But he is otherwise engaged. Everywhere he looks, there's something afoot – and even a detective of Haritos' ilk cannot enforce the law everywhere. Most of the characters in these ten stories have to do that themselves – in their own way. They have come from the Balkans in search of a better life: of work, money, a little bit of luck. Hardly any of them dares to dream, however, of finding a new home. Certainly not the young girl who is dropped off in the park every morning and picked up again each evening. And yet she manages to do precisely that of which most of the adults are incapable – to make contact with a local. A xenophobic old man, in whom, in spite of all his bitterness, something has remained: curiosity.
With a good dose of black humour and a complete lack of sentimentality, Petros Markaris paints the picture of a society in which the lines between good and evil, between justice and injustice, have become blurred. All that remains are people – left to fend for themselves.

This insight into the making of the film Eternity and a Day (winner of the ›Palme d’Or‹ at the Cannes Film Festival, 1998) reveals a whole new side to the crime writer Petros Markaris.

Featuring photos from the film set.

»I have no idea how to write a screenplay.«
»Don’t worry,« Theo said, »I’ll show you.«
From then on, we were inseparable.

On the inspiring friendship between the writer Petros Markaris and director Theo Angelopoulos.

Petros Markaris is known for his fast-paced crime fiction, Theo Angelopoulos for his epic auteur films. Together, the two men wrote the screenplay for one of Europe’s most important films, Eternity and a Day. The dialogue between them shows the interplay of humour and the serious side in the creative process – and how literature and great cinema come about.