At the crossroads of Art and Crime When criminal lawyer and criminologist Christos Markogiannakis decided to encounter murderers on the written page rather than face them across the aisle, little did he realize that he’d embark on a fulltime writing career, probing into the sinister collusion of art and crime throughout history. Are works of art innately troubling? Can crime be considered an art form? Is crime but an ugly depiction of human darkness? Christos Markogiannakis meditates on these questions with Sudha Nair-Iliades.
We’re glad you moved from practising law to writing crime fiction. What prompted you to give up a promising career to writing murder mysteries? Although I enjoyed practising (criminal) law, I couldn’t bear the thought that I’d be doing it for the rest of my life. I now realize that it was meant to be a stepping-stone to criminology and then writing. And I’m grateful for it, because studying law taught me how to develop my thoughts, and practising criminal law allowed me to meet and understand criminals, both of which came in handy. When my first book in France was published and was well received, I decided to give writing my all and gave up my career as a lawyer. I never regretted it! I prefer murderers on the written page than in real life.
Christos Markogiannakis at Athenée © Giannis Seferos
You split your time between Paris and Athens, and you’ve had crime scenes set in both cities. Which of the two capitals is a natural stage for a perfect murder mystery? I love both cities, and I love Greece and France, the country that raised me and the country that gave me the chance to become me. I set crimes in both Paris and Athens, but in a different way: Paris, with its indisputable beauty and artistic character, inspired the criminartistic series of books, which deal with murder as represented in art and as a form of art, while Athens with its harsh exterior, often surrealistic reality and beautiful light gave birth to my police captain, Christophoros Markou, and his murder investigations. To each city, its murders, either criminartistic or whodunits!
athens insider | 44 |
