Customer Reviews

Zone Defence. Petros Markaris

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Set one hot summer in Athens when the garbage collectors are on strike and Inspector Haritos is ailing, trying to avoid his wife's hypochondriac concerns for his heart, smoking and pigging out, and chasing after the perpetrators of a gangland shooting of a restaurant owner, and pondering about an unknown corpse that may or may not be linked to said restaurateur. This is very funny book and every page is a joy; it is remarkably un-PC (Haritos says, for example, "there are two things in life I hate: racism and blacks"), sledging Greece's various Balkan neighbours, but not particularly positive on Greeks either. Haritos himself has been married for years, and although he is frequently exasperated by his wife, they do love each other deeply, which is quite exceptional (and even exceptionable - which detective is happy in his personal life?); much of the novel deals with his relationships with her and their adored daughter, amidst ruminations on Greek techniques of tax-evasion, illegal immigration, low-level football leagues, politics and the exigencies of fame. It is a solid police procedural, well worth your time.

I admit I'm fairly new to the world of detective novels, but this book really captured my interest. I think it was the setting (Athens in the late 1990s) and the characters, rather than the mystery itself, that made it such a fun read.

I've noticed lately a lot of foreign writers are doing the classic noir Raymond Chandler/Dashiell Hammett-type "hard-boiled detective," and Inspector Haritos is no different in that sense. He's seen it all and done it all, though he's not always very happy about it. He has a very clear notion of right and wrong, and quite strong opinions about people and changes in the world he thinks are wrong. He frequently defies American mores of political correctness with moments of bigotry, sexism, and xenophobia, though he is quick to admit his mistakes and is genuinely interested in learning about new things. At the same time, he is a middle-aged Greek police officer (and very much the civil servant), making him prone to fits of temper, passion, or stubborn indifference.

But when he's not busy being a stock character, Inspector Haritos has many moments of thinking about events, people, and his world around him where he becomes entirely human. His relationship with his nagging wife is tempestuous yet endearing, as is his relationship with Greece itself. The story abounds with characters who have only a line or two but who deftly set the scene, and who make an intriguingly foreign backdrop to the story.

I had a few qualms while reading. Markaris has a tendency to be overly explicit about street names and neighborhoods. For someone who's never been to Athens, all of these references are meaningless. My other problem is my own shortcoming rather than the author's, which is that I don't know a lot about political events in Greece in the 1980s, so there were several jokes, references, and political undercurrents that I couldn't quite understand.

Nonetheless, it was a good and entertaining read that I happily recommend to anyone looking to read a slightly different detective novel.