Reading Europe - Greece: The Final Reckoning

Set in Greece in 2008, just prior to the elections that will bring Alexis Tsipras to power, The Final Reckoning by Petros Markaris, one of the country’s most popular writers, is a cleverly disguised police procedural which takes listeners beneath the headlines and exposes a country in moral as well as financial crisis.

The story begins with the quadruple suicide of four elderly women, friends who can longer see how to survive in a country where poverty is an arm of government policy. But somehow the death of these four hapless women precipitates an outpouring of public anger, and this rage finds expression when some of Athens’ wealthiest citizens start turning up dead, causing a dilemma for the police and, in particular, Superintendent Kosta Jaritos.

Jaritos was once in the Military Police – the strong arm of the hated dictatorship of The Generals who ruled Greece as recently as the 1970s – and as a young officer he did things he was ordered to and of which he is now far from proud.

The guilt he feels about a man called Merenditis, who died while in his custody, just will not go away and he knows in his heart that this new wave of murders is somehow linked to the crimes of the past – the crimes he himself committed.

Dramatised for radio by Michael Butt.

Cast:

Kosta Jaritos….Philip Jackson
Adriani….Pamela Miles
Katerina….Jane Slavin
Detective Kula….Amaka Okafor
Detective Vlas….Chris Pavlo
Superintendent Guikas….Stephen Boxer
Zisis….Michael Elwyn
Katsumbelos…Paul Panting

Producer: Eoin O'Callaghan for Big Fish

Publicity contact: BBC Radio 4 Publicity