“I served the police reporting for forty years and throughout my professional career, I had the chance to live a life with my fellow journalists, with police officers, with firefighters, but also with all kinds of criminals.

In exercising my journalistic profession, I always prioritized providing accurate and objective information to my readers, listeners, and viewers. I never liked to condemn or exonerate criminals and various lawbreakers – that is not the journalist's job. It is the job of prosecutors and judges. I never confused my role with the role of others – the roles are distinct.

Almost all those included in this book I have met personally. And I met them all while reporting on the offenses for which they were charged and convicted – and I can tell you that they are also people with feelings, with flaws but also with virtues, which many of them use for the wrong targets, for the wrong purposes.

I also wrote this book because I want to leave a legacy to the next generations about the course of crime in Greece over these forty years. To document the real incidents that engaged public opinion and to outline personalities and situations without a trace of exaggeration or inaccuracies, while simultaneously conveying some positive messages for our fellow human beings and, more generally, for Greek society – without, of course, playing the teacher, the prosecutor, or the preacher.”

Robbers who spend their money in nightclubs and sew their lips with needle and thread, serial killers who kill for pleasure, courteous burglars and ideologues of illegality, manhunts, cinematic escapes by helicopter, dramatic arrests, but also fatal mistakes by the police – notorious criminals whom the police and the Justice system categorized in the criminal pantheon, through the eyes of Panos Sombolos.