Bitter Lemon Press

Praise for Holy Smoke, the first in the Antoine series:

"A terrific black comedy …both a blasphemously funny satire of provincial Italian chicanery and a wry acknowledgment of the ambivalence that ambitious immigrants feel about their roots."—The New York Times

"Unexpected deadly demands made in the name of friendship inspire the plot of this quirky mystery novel. Irreverently inveighs against romantic love, cancer and the Paris suburbs."—The Washington Post

"An iconoclastic chronicle of small-time crooks and desperate capers, with added Gallic and Italian flair. Wonderful fun."—Guardian

Antoine, a fanatic billiards player, is asked to watch over a Paris art gallery. When he scuffles with a thief a statue falls and severs his right hand. His maverick investigation leads to the discovery of a series of gruesome killings. Soon Antoine finds himself the prime suspect in the murder of a gallery owner. A game of billiards decides the outcome of this satirical tale which brilliantly captures the world of modern art and the parasites that infest it.

After being, in turn, a museum night-watchman, and a train guard on the Paris-Rome line, Tonino Benacquista is now a highly successful author of fiction and film scripts.

"The role of Guido Guerrieri is to take on impossible cases that have little chance of success. The lawyer accepts the case only because he's fallen in lust with the prisoner's wife; his efforts to prove his client's innocence bring him into dangerous conflict with Mafia interests. Everything a legal thriller should be."—The Times

Counsel for the defense Guido Guerrieri is asked to handle the appeal of Fabio Paolicelli, who has been sentenced to sixteen years for drug smuggling. The odds are stacked against the accused: not only the fact that he initially confessed to the crime but also his past as a neo-Fascist thug. It is only the intervention of Paolicelli's beautiful half-Japanese wife that finally overcomes Guerrieri's reluctance. Matters are further complicated when Guerrieri ends up in bed with her.

This book is hard-boiled and sun-dried in equal parts. Where Philip Marlowe would be knocking back bourbon and listening to the snap of fist on jaw, Guerrieri prefers Sicilian wine and Leonard Cohen. The local color is complemented by snappy legal procedural writing which sends the reader tumbling through the clockwork of a tightly wound plot.

Gianrico Carofiglio, a member of the Senate in Italy, was an anti-Mafia prosecutor in Bari, a port on the coast of Puglia. He has been involved with trials concerning corruption, organized crime, and human trafficking. He has written four Guido Guerrieri novels, all bestsellers, having sold over a million copies worldwide.

The setting for this witty and insightful debut crime novel is a Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, family hotel. Rio is the perfect backdrop with its history of military dictatorship, drug wars, child gangs, and violent policing tactics.

The decapitated body of a hotel resident is found. The eyes have been removed from the head, casually left on the floor of the room. The victim's eerie, frozen Mona Lisa smile seems to indicate that the murderer had been received as a friend.

According to the police, the victim was stabbed in the heart and died before the decapitation. As the investigation continues, with few leads or clues worth pursuing, other hotel clients are found dead; all decapitated, usually with the head found delicately balanced on their knees.

This classical crime novel provides an opportunity for Frei Betto (a Dominican friar, once a political prisoner, a union activist, and then an adviser to President Lula da Silva) to describe Brazilian society, especially those left at its edge, like Rio's favela children, abused, hunted-down, but also addicted to drugs and violent crime.

The book tells the fascinating back stories of the hotel residents, suspects, and eventual victims, such as the maid who dreams of making it in television soaps, and the female pimp who has survived incestuous rape, while being faithful to a suspenseful intrigue that could have been thought up by Ruth Rendell.

Brazil will receive much attention as host of the 2014 Football World Cup and the 2016 Olympics.

"Breathless pace. Touches effortlessly on identity, love, alcohol, and the cynicism of the business world."—Les Echos

Who hasn't wanted to become "someone else"? Over a drink in Paris, two men give each other three years to see which one can more radically alter his life. Blin becomes a private detective. He takes on a new identity, even a surgically altered face. Gredzinski, a self-effacing corporate executive, discovers liquor that evening and rapidly yields to the sensuality and self-confidence induced by alcoholism. Things get complicated when Blin is hired by an ex-lover to find himself and when Gredzinski secretly follows his girlfriend to her home. A helter-skelter tale of humor and suspense.

Winner of the literary prize RTL-Lire.

The fifth in the Martin Bora WWII mystery series. In May 1941, Wehrmacht officer Bora is sent to Crete, recently occupied by the German army, and must investigate the brutal murder of a Red Cross representative befriended by SS-Chief Himmler. All the clues lead to a platoon of trigger-happy German paratroopers, but is this the truth?

Bora takes to the mountains of Crete to solve the case, navigating his way between local bandits and foreign resistance fighters. With echoes of Claus von Stauffenberg, Bora is torn between his duty as an officer and his integrity as a human being.

Praise for the Havana Quartet:

"Havana Red, another winner from Bitter Lemon Press."—The New York Times

"Overlaid with a rich smoky patina, an atmosphere that reeks of slums and riches, cigar smoke and exotic perfumes."—The Independent

"Talk about unexpected discoveries, the Havana Quartet is a revelation. With a nod to Key Largo and a virtual bow to The Maltese Falcon, these novels are ultimately about the redemptive nature of undying friendship and the potentially destructive nature of undying love."—The Atlantic Monthly

"Drenched with that beguiling otherness so appealing to fans of mysteries of other cultures, it will also appeal to those who appreciate the sultry lyricism of James Lee Burke."—Booklist

The fourth title of the prize-winning Havana Quartet.

Twenty-four-year-old Lissette Delgado was beaten, raped, and then strangled with a towel. Marijuana is found in her apartment and her wardrobe is suspiciously beyond the means of a high school teacher. Lieutenant Conde is pressured by "the highest authority" to conclude this investigation quickly when chance leads him into the arms of a beautiful redhead, a saxophone player who shares his love for jazz and fighting fi sh.

This is a Havana of crumbling, grand buildings, secrets hidden behind faded doors, and corruption. For an author living in Cuba, Leonardo Padura is remarkably outspoken about the failings of Fidel Castro's regime. Yet this is a eulogy of Cuba, its life of music, sex, and the great friendships of those who elected to stay and fight for survival.

When Judge Larocca is accused of corruption, Guerrieri goes against his better instincts and takes the case. Helped by Annapaola Doria, a motorbike-riding bisexual private detective who keeps a baseball bat on hand for sticky situations, he investigates the alleged links to the mafia. Of course Guerrieri cannot stop himself from falling for Annapaola's exotic charms.

The novel is a suspenseful legal thriller but it is also much more. It is the story of a judge who, to quote Dostoevsky, "lies to himself and listens to his own lies, so gets to the point where he can no longer distinguish the truth, either in himself or around himself."

A severed head is found on the Greek border near a wall planned to stop Middle Eastern immigrants crossing from Turkey. Intelligence Agent Evangelos wants the truth about the murder, human trafficking into Greece, and about the corruption surrounding the wall's construction. It is a mystery novel and a political thriller but more importantly it evokes the problems of the West incarnated in Greece: isolationism, fear of immigration, economic collapse, and corruption. While dark, it is also poetic and paints an indelible portrait of Athens, with its mixed fragrances of eucalyptus, freshly baked bread, and cigarette smoke.

"A spine-tingling novel that keeps you mesmerized from beginning to end."—InfiniteStorie

"Morozzi has a light touch. He has an uncanny ability to convey mood swings, excitement and plot twists with ever increasing velocity."—Gazzetta di Parma

"A chilling and claustrophobic thriller with an unpredictable ending. Morozzi joins the best in the genre."—LINUS

Bologna in August: unbearable heat, an empty city. Claudia is a young student in a hurry to return home from her work as a waitress and get out of the skimpy uniform she hates. Tomas is a young man on his way to elope to Amsterdam with his girlfriend, Francesca. Aldo is a husband and father with an uncanny resemblance to Elvis Presley, anxious to get to an apartment filled with guilty secrets. All three have an urgent need to be somewhere else. Instead, they are trapped in an elevator in a deserted building on a holiday weekend. They are like three wasps in an upturned glass . . . and one of the trio is a serial killer.

This dark, twist-packed psychological thriller in the style of Phonebooth has been adapted as a US film to be released in the fall of 2008, starring Amber Tamblyn and directed by cult Mexican auteur Rigoberto Castañeda.

Gianluca Morozzi was born in Bologna in 1971, where he lives today. He is well-known as a cutting-edge satirist and music critic, often compared to Nick Hornby and Ben Elton. Blackout is his first thriller.

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

"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.

"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.

"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.

"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.