Blood & Gold

Athens. Autumn. The start of a crazy week for private investigator George Zafiris. On Monday a friend is killed by a hit and run driver. On Tuesday the body vanishes. On Wednesday Zafiris begins to ask questions, and on Thursday the first death threats are made. By Friday things are starting to get complicated. A brilliant young concert violinist disappears, quickly followed by her husband.



The police seem to be co-operative, but everywhere Zafiris looks, he finds obstructions, dishonesty, mysterious delays. As the country's debt crisis takes its toll on the people of Athens, suicides and illness proliferate. Zafiris finds his own life spinning dangerously out of control.



A few days in an ancient monastery on Mount Athos seem to offer some respite. But there's a surprise waiting there too.



Faithful to the traditions of hard-edged crime, Leo Kanaris has hit on a contemporary setting that smacks of the U.S. crime capitals of the Twenties. Welcome to Athens, a city mired in double-dealing and corruption.



When one of the few honest politicians is killed in a hit-and-run, his friend, private investigator George Zafiris, is called in to salvage a police inquiry foundering on bureaucratic obstructions and high-level protection of vested interests.



Violence is never far away, as Zafiris pitches headfirst into a conspiracy to cover up the sale of archaeological treasures, a case that overlaps with the murder of a young violinist on the edge of international fame.



Against a backdrop of a financial crisis that is pushing the country to bankruptcy and its citizens to despair, it is all horribly convincing. With this, his second novel, Kanaris has advanced to a five-star rating