Stelios Spougias lives in a small town in central Greece. Love brought him here, but his ex-wife, after giving birth, left him for another man, and he found himself alone when she took their child with her and moved in Thessaloniki.

Stelios Spougias assimilated with the local spirit, in which the majority of locals believed that the most useful phrase in life was settle down. A few times, he had considered departing like a gentleman, maybe to Australia, as far away as another world.

But there was his boy, his only son, Chronis.

Thus, he didn’t run away, he stayed with his frames, augmenting the importance of the shop and the special importance of relationships with his various customers.

Chronis is now an adult, in love with Clea and he goes to visit his father.

In this town where there had not been a single murder in decades, the land disputes and the adulteries had not driven the locals to extreme behaviours, the local police mostly dealt with breaches of quiet hours, traffic offences, burglaries, insults and disputes over football and party politics, Chronis gets murdered.

Ioanna Karystiani is a master of psychological plots, but here she overcomes herself: the solution of this murder is unimaginable.

A really strong novel about feeling disrespected and unloved.

Kastaniotis, 2024, 288 p