Bitter Lemon Press

Praise for the Martin Bora series:

"The tone of Liar Moon has a flu-like grimness, appropriate the 1943 setting. Pastor is excellent at providing details (silk stockings, movie magazines, cigarettes) that light up the setting."—Booklist

"Lumen's plot is well crafted, her prose shap . . . a disturbing mix of detection and reflection."—Publisher's Weekly

Rome, 1944. While the Allies are fighting their way up the Italian peninsula, Rome lives the last days of Nazi occupation. Their world is falling apart as the German Army, the Gestapo, and the SS vie for power while holding glittering and debauched parties. But this is also a time of Italian partisan attacks, arrests, and mass executions, all to the sound of Allied artillery bombardment just outside the walls of the city.

Baron Martin von Bora, an officer in the Wehrmacht, has the complex and delicate task of solving not one, but three murders. A young German embassy secretary has "accidentally" fallen to her death from a fourth-floor window, and a Roman society lady and a headstrong cardinal of the Roman Curia are found dead in her apartment. The cardinal is personally known to Bora and, like the officer, secretly active in the resistance against the Third Reich. With Italian police inspector Sandro Guidi at his side, Bora sets off to establish the truth. Different as they are, the two men confront crime, war, and dictatorship in the awareness that the dignity of man comes at a price beyond all imagination.

The return of Kalmann, the oddball hero of the bestselling novel of the same name. Set first in West Virginia and Washington at the time of the 2021 riots at the US Capitol Building and then in the far north of Iceland where Kalmann, the self-appointed Sheriff of a small fishing village, is faced with murders leading back to US shenanigans in Iceland during the Cold War. 

Kalmann is back! But he’s already in trouble; in an interrogation room at the FBI headquarters in Washington, no less. All he wanted to do was visit his American father, but the loveable sheriff of Raufarhöfn got himself mixed up in the January 2021 Capitol riots.Thanks to sympathetic FBI agent Dakota Leen, he’s soon on a plane home. But not before she informs him that his grandfather was on a blacklist, suspected of spying for the Russians during the Cold War. Back in Iceland, there’s a murder and one heck of a mystery to unravel. And what role does a mysterious mountain play in all this? Somehow Kalmann never loses heart. There’s no need to worry; he has everything under control. 

REVIEWS of Kalmann 

“This affectionately comical yet beautiful and unique Icelandic mystery ensures the reader sits on the edge of a precipice before understanding strikes.” ---LoveReading 

“Told with pathos and much humour, not to mention slipping in some satirical barbs about Icelandic attitudes to foreigners. The only thing it does not explain is why fermented, sometimes rotting, shark meat should be such an Icelandic delicacy.” . ---Shots Magazine 

“The narrative charms of Schmidt’s unlikely detective will keep readers turning the pages. Nordic crime fans won’t want to miss this.”---Publishers Weekly

FOURTH IN THE MARTIN BORA SERIES.

SPELLBINDING MULTI-LAYERED CRIME NOVEL SET IN UKRAINE AS THE GERMANS REGROUP AFTER THE DISASTER OF STALINGRAD.

FOR FANS OF PHILLIP KERR (BERNIE GUNTHER SERIES), ALAN FURST (SPIES OF THE BALKANS).

THE HERO, MAJOR MARTIN BORA, IS AN ARISTOCRATIC GERMAN OFFICER OF THE ILK OF CLAUS VON STAUFFENBERG, TORN BETWEEN HIS DUTY AS AN OFFICER AND HIS INTEGRITY AS A HUMAN BEING.

Ukraine, 1943. Having barely escaped the inferno of Stalingrad, Major Martin Bora is serving on the Russian front as a German counterintelligence officer. Weariness, disillusionment, and battle fatigue are a soldier’s daily fare, yet Bora seems to be one of the few whose sanity is not marred by the horrors of war.
As the Wehrmacht prepare for the Kursk counter-offensive, a Russian general defects aboard a T-34, the most advanced tank of the war. Soon he and another general, this one previously captured, are found dead in their cells. Everything appears to exclude the likelihood of foul play, but Bora begins an investigation, in a stubborn attempt to solve a mystery that will come much too close to home.

"Mr. Carofiglio, drawing on his own professional background, excels at describing everyday legal proceedings in ways that transfix the reader." Wall Street Journal -------The latest in the Guido Guerrieri series. The setting is Bari in Southern Italy. Against his own instincts, defence attorney Guerrieri takes on an appeal against what looks like an unassailable murder conviction. The alleged perpetrator is the son of a former lover. A taught legal thriller and a meditation about the ravages of time.

"This important book...brought home to me the complex and shifting situation in the Middle East and the danger of looking for simple responses or explanations. I loved the character of Jonas - the quiet man pushed by his own guilt into becoming a hero." ANN CLEEVES, author of the Shetland and Vera Stanhope crime series.

Jonas works for the UK secret service as an intelligence analyst. When his father is kidnapped and held for ransom by ISIS gunmen in Syria, he takes matters into his own hands and begins to steal the only currency he has access to: secret government intelligence. He heads to Beirut with a haul of the most sensitive documents imaginable and recruits an unlikely ally – an alcoholic Swiss priest named Father Tobias. Despite barely surviving his previous contact with ISIS, Tobias agrees to travel into the heart of the Islamic State and inform the kidnappers that Jonas is willing to negotiate for his father's life. When the British and American governments realise they may be dealing with betrayal on a scale far greater than that of Edward Snowden, they try everything in their power to stop Jonas, and he finds himself tested to the limit as he fights to keep the negotiations alive and play his enemies off against each other. As the book races towards a thrilling confrontation in the Syrian desert, Jonas will have to decide how far he is willing to go to see his father again.

"This is not simply a triumph of style; it is both a reflection on a time of bloodshed and a raw vision of human misery."—Guillermo Saccomanno, winner of the Argentine National Literature Prize

"This man knows. He knows about guns, knows about women, knows about dead bodies. . . . But above all he knows how to narrate."—Ana María Shua, author of El peso de la tentación

Superintendent Lascano is a detective working under the shadow of military rule in Buenos Aires in the late 1970s. Sent to investigate a double murder, he arrives at the crime scene to find three bodies. Two are clearly the work of the Junta's death squads, murders he is forced to ignore; the other one seems different.

The trail leads Lascano through a decadent Argentina, a country poisoned to its core by the tyranny of the regime. The third corpse turns out to be that of Biterman, moneylender and Auschwitz survivor. When Lascano digs too deep, he must confront Giribaldi, an army major, quick to help old friends but ruthless in dealing with dissenters such as Eva, the young militant with whom Lascano is falling in love.

Born in 1948, Ernesto Mallo is a published essayist, newspaper columnist, screenwriter, and playwright. He is a former anti-Junta militant who was pursued by the dictatorship. Needle in a Hay Stack is his first novel and the first in a trilogy with superintendent Lascano. The first two are being made into films.

"Pelletier is a wonderful storyteller. She is a master of funny, bittersweet dialogue. A classic roman noir hero, the world weary inspector, is completely reinvented."—Le Monde

The naked bodies of a male dancer and a young girl are found entwined backstage in the Moulin Rouge. A junkie is killed, his throat chewed open, the teeth marks human. Seemingly unconnected, these deaths form a sinister pattern involving crack dealers and shady property deals.

Inspector Maurice Less is plagued by a female boss who bombards him with tales of her sexual exploits. Together they uncover a trail of fear and broken dreams that reaches from Corsica into the heart of Paris.

Winner of the Grand Prix du Roman Noir de Cognac.

"Both a scathing and picaresque comedy, a biting and spicy concoction. Just like tequila."—Le Monde

It's not easy being a cop in Mexico City. Meet Carlito, a police detective with a complicated life. A wife, a mistress, children by both. He resorts to money laundering and arms dealing to finance his police activity. The money for justice must be found somewhere.

The corpse in the hotel room is that of a gringo with a weakness for blue movies. Carlito's maverick investigation leads him into a labyrinth of gang wars and corrupt politicians.

Rolo Diez, born in Argentina, was imprisoned for two years during the military dictatorship. He now lives in Mexico City, where he works as a novelist and screenwriter.

"A Quicksilver Mystery That Flickers, Flashes, Twists And Turns." New York Times, 21 July 2022. From the author of The Aosawa Murders, one of the NYT Notable Books of 2020. 

Set in Tokyo over the course of one night, Aki and Hiro have decided to be together one last time in their shared flat before parting. Their relationship has broken down after a mountain trek during which their guide died inexplicably. Now each believes the other to be a murderer and is determined to extract a confession before the night is over. Who is the murderer and what really happened on the mountain?

In the battle of wills between them, the chain of events leading up to this night is gradually revealed in a gripping psychological thriller that keeps the reader in suspense to the very end.

Praise for Ernesto Mallo's Needle in a Haystack:

“A vivid and compelling picture of a society riven by corruption, social breakdown, and casual brutality. A pacy, intense, and thought-provoking read.”—Guardian

“Martin Cruz Smith and Philip Kerr fans will be rewarded.”—Publishers Weekly

“A gritty, painful portrait of a dystopian culture spinning further and further out of control. A compelling, blood-stained document of tyranny and brutality told with skill and passion.”—Crime Time

In the second book in the Superintendent Lascano series, Lascano is drawn into a war between the Buenos Aires chief of police and the Apostles, drug-dealing cops who want to control the city. When the chief of police is murdered, Lascano becomes the Apostles’ next target. His only way out of the country is to retrieve the loot from a bungled bank robbery.

Ernesto Mallo paints a scathing portrait of Argentina, where the Junta’s generals are paraded in court in civilian clothes and treated like mere petty thieves. Corruption and violence continue to rule, but at the center of the novel lies a touching portrayal of two broken men, a cop and a robber, whose humanity is sorely tested by the troubles racking their beloved country.

Born in 1948, Ernesto Mallo is a published essayist, newspaper columnist, and playwright. He is a former militant, pursued by the dictatorship as a member of the guerilla movement.

"Olguín, an acclaimed Argentinian novelist, delivers a layered, gripping story, finely translated by Miranda France." Best New Crime Thrillers, Financial Times THE TIMES BOOK OF THE MONTH. 

"The Foreign Girls is very much a literary novel rather than simply a thriller. More slow-burning tango than brisk paso doble. The realities of life in Latin America offer little escapism perhaps, but in the gutsy, raunchy Veronica they have a contemporary heroine to cherish." The Times 

 Two foreign girls are murdered after a high society party in Yacanto del Valle, northern Argentina. Their bodies are found in a field near sacrificial offerings, apparently from a black magic ritual. Verónica Rosenthal, an audacious, headstrong Buenos Aires journalist with a proclivity for sexual adventure, could never have imagined that her holiday would end with her two friends dead. Not trusting the local police, she decides to investigate for herself.

"...One shares Susanne's belief that she must try to carry the deception off. Whether she will succeed keeps the reader, peering over Susanne's shoulder at all the traps, turning the pages of this remarkable book."—The Independent (UK)

Praise for Petra Hammesfahr's The Sinner:

"The Sinner is best psychological suspense novel I have read all year."—Daily Telegraph

"Dubbed Germany's answer to Patricia Highsmith, Hammesfahr should win new fans with this novel."Publishers Weekly

"Demonstrates why she is one of Germany's bestselling writers of crime and psychological thrillers. It's grim, delves deep into the human psyche, and keeps you gripped."The Times (London)

Nadia and Susanne look uncannily alike, but one of the women is seriously rich and the other is destitute. When Nadia asks Susanne to spend the weekend with her husband so that she can sneak off with a lover, how can Susanne refuse the outrageous payment on offer? Nadia and her husband barely speak to each other and he will be working most of the weekend. Easy money, or so it seems.

One Friday afternoon Susanne drives Nadia's Alfa to her beautiful suburban villa with its indoor pool and glass doors opening onto the sloping lawn. This first stay is followed by others, as an apparently harmless game becomes a deadly web of lies.

Petra Hammesfahr, born in 1951, has not had an easy life: she left school at thirteen and became pregnant by an alcoholic husband at seventeen. She published her first novel when she was forty and has since written over twenty crime and suspense novels. Petra also writes scripts for television and film. She has won numerous literary prizes, including the Crime Prize of Wiesbaden and the Rhineland Literary Prize.

"Solana's excellent novel, set in the streets and parlors of Barcelona, offers probing social commentary and an excellent crime story."—Booklist

Two detectives, brothers Borja and Eduard, are contracted by best-selling author Teresa Solana to research the world of so-called alternative therapies. They enroll for a course at Zen Moments, an exclusive meditation center in the ritziest part of Barcelona, only to discover the director murdered, whacked in the head with a statuette of the Buddha. The violent death of a neighbor—who happens to be a CIA agent—simultaneously drags them into an international conspiracy complicated by Borja's attempt to smuggle a priceless Assyrian figurine, the Lioness of Baghdad.

In this, the third in her satirical series, Catalan "noir" novelist Teresa Solana mercilessly punctures the pretensions of New Age quacks who promote pseudo-science and pseudo-spirituality. At the same time, Solana draws compassionate portraits of characters trying to live "ordinary" lives in circumstances that have ceased to be normal, yet still cope with such everyday issues as adultery, menopause, and simply surviving to the end of the month.

Born in 1962, Teresa Solana lives in Barcelona, Spain. She has written several novels, some kept quietly in her drawer, others highly acclaimed. A Not So Perfect Crime, the first in this series, won the 2007 Brigada 21 Prize for the best Catalan mystery novel.

Peter Bush is the well known translator of Leonardo Padura and Juan Goytisolo.

"What matters is that [Esmahan] Aykol uses the genre to tell us a little more about the world than we’re used to hearing from more commercial writers."—Newsday

"A wonderful novel about Istanbul. The Turkish way of life, prejudices, men, politics, corruption—Esmahan Aykol writes about all these with a light and humorous touch."—Petros Markaris, author of Che Committed Suicide and Zone Defence

"Bubbling with hedonism, enthusiasm, love of life and books, this should be mandatory reading for those holidaying in Turkey, visitors to Istanbul, and lovers of crime novels."—Hamburger Abendblatt

This debut by a young Turkish woman novelist is set in her beloved Istanbul. The heroine, Kati Hirschel, is a foreigner and proud owner of the only mystery bookshop in town. When the director of a film starring an old school friend is found murdered in his hotel room, Kati cannot resist the temptation to start her own maverick investigation. After all, her friend Petra is the police's principal suspect, and reading all those detective novels must have taught Kati something.

This suspenseful tale of murder features a heroine who is funny, feisty and undresses men in her mind more often than she would like. It uses humor, social commentary, and even erotic fantasy to expose Western prejudices about Turkey, as well as Turkish stereotyping of other Europeans.

Esmahan Aykol was born in 1970 in Edirne, Turkey. She was a journalist for a number of Turkish publications and radio stations. After a stint as a bartender she turned to fiction writing. Hotel Bosphorus is her first novel and will be followed by two others featuring Kati Hirschel.

"An ironic and relentless thriller. A chase that won't let you catch your breath until the last page."—Carlo Lucarelli, author of Day after Day

"A perfect blend of a fast-paced chase film with biting satire; pot-shots taken at politicians, the secret service, the police, the idle and less idle rich, and other urban low-lifers. Let war begin."—La Republica

"Inspired by the hard-core writing of Elmore Leonard and Donald E. Westlake. Rigosi takes things a step further with a gift for drawing relevant and unforgettable characters."—Il Manifesto

Leila is young, beautiful and a hustler. She robs hapless men picked up in the night clubs of Bologna. Easy money, until she ends up with a document at the center of a plot of political blackmail. In an atmosphere of intense paranoia two secret service operatives, a goon hired by the blackmailer and the police all pursue Leila for the document and a suitcase full of dollars meant to be the pay-off. She joins forces with Francesco, a bus driver and gambling addict on the run from the Bear, a terrifying debt collector. Suitcases and blackmail notes change hands at a frenetic pace against a background of torture and murder.

Production of the film of Night Bus began in October 2005.

Giampiero Rigosi, born in 1962, lives and works in Bologna. He is an acclaimed literary critic, short-story and song writer as well as a producer of radio programs on mystery literature. Night Bus is his first crime novel.

The second in the series featuring Basel police inspector Peter Hunkeler. An elegant young Lebanese man carrying diamonds in his bag is on the train from Frankfurt to Basel, a drug mule on the return journey. At the Basel train station, Hunkeler is waiting for him after a tipoff from the German police. The courier manages to get to the station toilet and flushes the stones away. Erdogan, a young Turkish sewage worker, finds the diamonds in the pipes under the station. To him they mean wealth and the small hotel he always wanted to buy near his family village. To his older Swiss girl-friend Erika, employed at a supermarket checkout counter, the stones signify the end of their life together. She knows that Erdogan has a wife and children in Turkey. For the courier, finding the stones is a matter of life and death. His employers are on their way to “tidy things up”. For Hunkeler the stones are the only way to get to the people behind the drug trade. They turn out to include not only the bottom-feeding drug gangs but bankers and politicians very high up the Basel food chain. This is a tale of ordinary people accidentally caught in a vortex of crime, like Hank and Jacob in A Simple Plan by Scott Smith or even Guy Haines in Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith. Unusually, and refreshingly, no one gets killed.