Sergio Gakas plunges two unlikely heroes and allies deep into a world of corruption, greed, and violence to unravel a conspiracy.

Fire consumes an old house in Athens, incinerating three inhabitants and leaving a fourth close to death. What looks like arson attracts two investigators whose inquiry uncovers a web of dodgy dealings. Their unorthodox pursuit of assorted villains takes them from crumbling downtown haunts and provincial hotels to plush suburban retreats and a lavishly appointed monastery.

On the way their acerbic exchanges initiate the reader to subjects of endless contention in Greek life: politics and football.

Ashes, by Sergios Gakas, mixes the heady delights of noir with a devastating portrait of a society caught in the long shadow of civil conflict and tainted by greed and racism. Originally published in Greek as ‘Stachtes’ in 2008, Ashes is now available in English, translated by Anne-Marie Stanton-Ife for MacLehose Press.

The owner of the burnt house is Simeon Piertzovanis, a lawyer, drinker and gambler. The survivor is a former lover, Sonia Varika, also an alcoholic, who abandoned a successful stage career and has been living in rent-free seclusion with a refugee family from Nigeria and her former mentor, yet another dedicated drinker.

As the presumed beneficiary of any fire insurance payout, Piertzovanis is an obvious suspect, but his alibi convinces the official investigator, Chronis Halkidis, head of the police force’s internal affairs department and another ex-lover of Sonia’s.

By rights the arson squad should be in charge, but Halkidis calls in a favor from his boss and takes over, but when a diktat from his superior slams the case shut, Halkidis goes rogue. He co-opts his staff and Piertzovanis into a clandestine investigation and acquires a stash of illegal drugs to boost his stamina.

Apart from their love for Sonia and a self-destructive streak, the two men share a strong ethical compass that guides them, albeit along unconventional paths. Yet they bond hesitantly, their unconfessed rivalry over Sonia a recurring source of friction between the abrasive police officer and the gentle lawyer.

Their discovery of an unholy alliance of bent officials, entrepreneurs, clergymen, and neo-Nazi thugs sends Halkidis further off the rails. He resorts to extreme measures and his vengefulness infects Piertzovanis, who regretfully admits the impossibility of securing justice in an unjust society.

Can it ever be right to do wrong? The question is central to the novel and Odyssey asked the author for his take on the justice versus revenge dilemma. Gakas suggested that another dilemma is currently more acute–that of either obeying laws or taking revenge “because those responsible for administering justice do not dare impinge on the interests of those who wield economic and political power.”

Though “angered by the harshness of the politically and economically powerful,” Gakas does not advocate taking the law into one’s own hands and taking revenge: “I’d rather be sad than vengeful. Nobody has the right to take a life.”

The three characters–Sonia, Piertzovanis and Halkidis–whose points of view narrate Ashes are haunted by past loves and failures, but humor counterpoints the bleakness tales. A theatre director by trade, Gakas knows how to make comic scenes defuse tension while carrying the story forward.

The male characters exchange ribald insults that often carry a complex freight of meaning, a challenge for the translator, as Stanton-Ife told Odyssey. “Swearing, culturally laden as it is, is a notoriously thorny area for any translator. Ashes is no exception, and beyond the standard curses you hear in everyday life which are an established part of the mainstream language, and of which there are many examples in the novel, it also contains several instances of derogatory phrases that carry entire chapters in recent Greek political history in their wake, as well as examples of language that can only be unpicked by a rather complex detour into the culture of Athenian football rivalries.”

But she applauded what she called the publisher’s “brave” decision not to pepper the text with footnotes. After all, she said, “one of the joys of reading foreign fiction is precisely this encounter with the unfamiliar.”

The good news for fans of Greek noir is that Gakas is working on a sequel. It will be the third in the series that he started with his 2001 novel, Kasko, where Piertzovanis made his debut.