[Ελληνική σύνοψη παρακάτω]

​

Before You Sleep With The Devil

Historical Fiction/Literary Suspense

SYNOPSIS

 

Beguiling, lyrical and suspenseful, Before You Sleep With The Devil is a portrait of one city's crushing encounter with history and a timeless story of new and past loves.

 

Athens, 1930: The effects of the American stock market crash are already felt throughout Europe. An estimated 1.3 million refugees have returned to Greece from previous wars, and the population of the city has doubled, straining the water supply.

 

Filotimos Bachus, a worldly, devil-may-care boulevardier, with a silent-movie actorly polish, is no stranger to murder. His intellectually disabled brother killed the director of the State Orphans' Home long ago. Convinced they had no other options, the boys went on the run, and set out to cosntruct a new life for themselves. Years later, Bachus expunged his Dickensian working-class childhood and other significant bits of his personal history, in order to align his life more strictly with the extravagant lifestyle of his best friend Amalia, who is one of the most eligible and affluent women in Athens. Through her connections, he advanced to a big-league job as gossip columnist, where he comes into daily contact with celebrities, sharks and ingénues. Very popular with women and men, Bachus relishes his reputation for grasping the Athenian elite firmly by its scrotum.

 

Amalia is married to an American manager, Sanford, whose company has signed a contract with the Greek government and the Bank of Athens to handle all aspects of constructing the much-needed dam—including the reservoir, a conveyance pipe and a water treatment plant. When Sanford and his business friends approach Bachus with an unusual proposition, his new life is forced into a collision course with the world he thought he'd left behind: His employers want him to dig up old dirt on the Assistant Chief of Police, who fancies himself a guardian of virtue.

 

Bachus lets himself be lured into a Faustian bargain with Sanford, knowing that it's impossible to shred the Assistant Chief's reputation of a blameless, unimpeachable official. The two men were friends in the Boy's House, in play and in mischief, and their lives were forever marked by the same wretched childhood. As Bachus fights through secrets and lies to conduct his investigation, the case calls him back to the people and places of his past. The trail involves the first silent movies made in Greece and a tight-knit group of physique entrepreneurs who run a male-prostitute ring through photography studios and mail-order catalogs.

 

When he is charged with the murder of a fellow reporter, his life as he knows it is well and truly over. Bachus insists that he is innocent, but the evidence overwhelmingly shows that he killed the young man. The Assistant Chief of Police is convinced that Bachus is telling the truth and lets him escape in order to prove his innocence and find out why he's been framed. Homeless and desperate, Bachus begs his way into Pireus City, a vastly different locale notorious for outrageous revelries, rebetico music halls, pimps and other lowlife. His only companions are a rising folk artist and an eccentric madam. His search for the truth leads him into a labyrinth of deceit where political and financial secrets seem to be the only evidence that can now save his life. There is a killer out there, watching his every move—an old ghost who knows way too much about his personal history and his employer's secrets.

 

At once dark and luminous, Before You Sleep With The Devil is a novel of loss and transformation, the harrowing truths from which we distract ourselves, and how one balances a hard-won identity with the weight of regret and stoicism.

​

​

ΠΡΙΝ ΚΟΙΜΗΘΕΙΣ ΜΕ ΤΟΝ ΔΙΑΒΟΛΟ

• Αρ. Σελίδων 344 - Έτος έκδοσης εντύπου 2020 Εκδόσεις ΚΡΙΤΙΚΗ

​

ΣΥΝΟΨΗ

Αθήνα 1930. Μέσα στη δίνη του αμερικανικού κραχ και της οικονομικής κρίσης στην Ευρώπη, η Ελλάδα αναζητά ένα νέο δάνειο. Η πόλη προσπαθεί ακόμα να αφομοιώσει τα κύματα των προσφύγων και να αντιμετωπίσει το καινούργιο έγκλημα. Ο Φιλότιμος Βάκχος, ως κοσμικογράφος στα Αθηναϊκά Νέα, ξέρει πολύ καλά πώς να φυλάει μυστικά αλλά και πώς να τα ξετρυπώνει. Όταν ο Αμερικανός επιχειρηματίας και σύζυγος της αδελφικής του φίλης ζητά τις υπηρεσίες του, ο Βάκχος δεν υποπτεύεται τον κίνδυνο. Μια ομάδα επιχειρηματιών έχει βάλει στόχο τον υποδιοικητή της Αστυνομικής Διεύθυνσης και αναθέτει στον Βάκχο να συγκεντρώσει ενοχοποιητικά στοιχεία για την παράνομη δράση του. Η έρευνά του θα τον φέρει σε επαφή με τον μεθυστικό κόσμο της νεοσύστατης κινηματογραφικής παραγωγής στην Ελλάδα και τον χώρο του ρεμπέτικου και του περιθωρίου. Όταν ανακαλύπτει όμως ένα δίκτυο ανδρικής πορνογραφίας που απειλεί τις υπολήψεις ισχυρών ανδρών του πολιτικού και οικονομικού βίου, είναι αργά για να ξεφύγει. Μέσα από μια σειρά καταιγιστικών ανατροπών, ο Βάκχος έρχεται αντιμέτωπος με τα δικά του μυστικά και βρίσκει τον μοναδικό σύμμαχο στο πιο τρομακτικό πρόσωπο από το σκοτεινό του παρελθόν.