Baby Blue - Pol Koutsakis (English)

A crime novel that takes place in the dark streets of Athens.

The second book of the Stratos Gazis series by Pol Koutsakis translated in English by Anne-Marie Stanton-Ife.

The story centres around the blue-eyed orphan Emma, the "baby blue" of the title, a beautiful teenage girl with a talent for card tricks of exceptional sophistication - all the more impressive for her tender years and the blindness that has afflicted her since the age of eight.

Emma and her adoptive father, a former investigative journalist, roam the streets of Athens together, earning enough to keep body and soul together by performing Chaplinesque sketches.

When the ex-journalist is brutally murdered, Angelino, a well-connected Athenian underworld figure, takes the girl under his wing and retains the services of Stratos to find her father's killers.

Meanwhile, Costas Dragas, a top homicide cop and Gazis's best friend, has taken on the investigation of a spate of murders of paedophiles, and as usual, has gone to war with the media.