The Sinner
Page 37
She sighed. "Have you heard from Herr Grovian?" Brauning shook his head. She gave another shrug. Water under the bridge flowed fast.
But she could never forget it all, not now. Only the ultimate sin of suicide could bring oblivion. She would have to see. If she couldn't bear it any longer ... A day clinic. And the nights in Margret's apartment. Margret was often on night duty, and she always kept plenty of pills in the little cupboard beside her bed.
D.B.
Elwood Reid
"Raunchy, seamy, cocksure, perversely juicy, so surprising in its vivid convolutions of plot and character that you keep turning back a few pages to see how the author is getting away with it."Jim Harrison, author of Legends of the Fall
In 1971 a man calling himself D.B. Cooper hijacked a flight, claimed his ransom without harming a soul and vanished. He parachuted out of the plane over the dense woods of the Pacific Northwest with $200,000 strapped to his body. Elwood Reid uses this true story as a starting point, imagining Cooper as Phil Fitch, a Vietnam vet with a failed marriage who decides the time has come to do something that will save him from a life of punching time cards and wondering what could have been. Fitch ends up in Mexico, where he drifts until a turn of bad luck forces him to return home.
Meanwhile, retired FBI agent Frank Marshall, struggling with his new life of leisure - fishing, drinking too much, tempted to embark on an affair with a female witness - decides to help a young agent determined to solve the case of D.B. Cooper. An odyssey, a manhunt, a gripping and frequently hilarious tale.
PRAISE FOR D.B.
"Wild and alive, an epic manhunt and brutal social portrait, D.B. is the road trip of your dreams - Hunter Thompson does the driving, but John Steinbeck holds the map." Mark Costello, author of Big If
"Masterfully told, D.B. ranks among the best and most entertaining books of the year." Pittsburgh "Tribune
"Elwood Reid ascends to the top of his generation with this novel." Mark Richard, author of Fishboy
"Smart and direct prose ... By shifting the reader's attention from the overtly dramatic to the psychological, Reid has written something much more engaging than the mere suspense novel D.B. might have been." The New York Times Book Review
FEVER
Friedrich Glauser
"With good reason, the German language prize for detective fiction is named after Glauser... He has Simenon's ability to turn a stereotype into a person, and the moral complexity to appeal to justice over the head of police procedure." Times Literary Supplement
When two women are "accidentally" killed by gas leaks, Sergeant Studer investigates the thinly disguised double murder in Bern and Basel. The trail leads to a geologist dead from a tropical fever in a Moroccan Foreign Legion post and a murky oil deal involving rapacious politicians and their henchmen. With the help of a hashish-induced dream and the common sense of his stay-at-home wife, Studer solves the multiple riddles on offer. But assigning guilt remains an elusive affair.
Fever, a European crime classic, was first published in 1936 and is the third in the Sergeant Studer series published by Bitter Lemon Press.
Praise for Glauser's other Sergeant Studer novels
"Thumbprint is a fine example of the craft of detective writing in a period which fans will regard as the golden age of crime fiction." Sunday "Telegraph
"Thumbprint is a genuine curiosity that compares to the dank poetry of Simenon and reveals the enormous debt owed by Durenmatt, Switzerland's most famous crime writer, for whom this should be seen as a template." Guardian
"A despairing plot about the reality of madness and life, leavened at regular intervals with strong doses of bittersweet irony. The idiosyncratic investigation of In Matto's Realm and its laconic detective have not aged one iota." Guardian
"Glauser was among the best European crime writers of the inter-war years. The detail, place and sinister characters are so intelligently sculpted that the sense of foreboding is palpable." Glasgow Herald
FRAMED
Tonino Benacquista
"One of France's leading crime and mystery authors." Guardian
Antoine's life is good. During the day he hangs pictures for the most fashionable art galleries in Paris. Evenings he dedicates to the silky moves and subtle tactics of billiards, his true passion. But when Antoine is attacked by an art thief in a gallery his world begins to fall apart. His maverick investigation triggers two murders - he finds himself the prime suspect for one of them - as he uncovers a cesspool of art fraud. A game of billiards decides the outcome of this violently funny tale, laced with brilliant riffs about the world of modern art and the parasites that infest it.
In 2004 Bitter Lemon Press introduced Tonino Benacquista to English-speaking readers with the critically acclaimed novel Holy Smoke.
PRAISE FOR FRAMED
"Screenwriter for the award-winning French crime movie The Beat That My Heart Skipped, Tonino Benacquista is also a wonderful observer of everyday life, petty evil and the ordinariness of crime. The pace never falters as personal grief collides with outrageous humour and a biting running commentary on the crooked world of modern art." Guardian
"Edgy, offbeat black comedy." The Times
"Flip and frantic foray into art galleries and billiards halls of modern Paris." Evening Standard
"A black comedy that is set in Paris but reflects its author's boisterous Italian sensibility. The manic tale is told by an apprentice picture-hanger who encounters a thief in a fashionable art gallery and becomes so caught up in a case of art fraud that he himself `touches up' a Kandinsky." New York Times
HAVANA BLACK
Leonardo Padura
A MARIO CONDE MYSTERY
"The mission of that enterprising Bitter Lemon Press is to publish English translations of the best foreign crime fiction. The newest addition to its list is the prize-winning Cuban novelist Leonardo Padura" The "Telegraph
The brutally mutilated body of Miguel Forcade is discovered washed up on a Havana beach. Head smashed in by a baseball bat, genitals cut off with a blunt knife. Forcade was once responsible for confiscating art works from the bourgeoisie fleeing the revolution. Had he really returned from exile just to visit his ailing father?
Lieutenant Mario Conde immerses himself in Cuba's dark history, expropriations of priceless paintings now vanished without trace, corruption and old families who appear to have lost much, but not everything.
Padura evokes the disillusionment of a generation, yet this novel is a eulogy to Cuba, and to the great friendships of those who chose to stay and fight for survival.
PRAISE FOR HAVANA BLACK
"A great plot, perfectly executed with huge atmosphere. You can almost smell the cigar smoke, rum and cheap women." Daily Mirror
"This is a strong tasting book. A rich feast of wit and feeling." The Independent
"Well-plotted second volume of Padura's seething, steamy Havana Quartet. This densely packed mystery should attract readers outside the genre." Publishers Weekly
"Lt. Mario Conde, known on the street as `the Count,' is prone to metaphysical reflection on the history of his melancholy land but the city of Havana keeps bursting through his meditations, looking very much alive." New York Times
THE MANNEQUIN MAN
Luca Di Fulvio
Shortlisted for the European Crime Writing Prize
"Di Fulvio exposes souls with the skills of a surgeon, It's like turning the pages of something forbidden - seduction, elegant and dangerous." Alan Rickman
"Know why she's smiling?" he asked, pointing a small torch at the corpse. "Fish hooks. Two fish hooks at the corners of her mouth, a bit of nylon, pull it round the back of the head and tie a knot. Pretty straightforward, right?" Amaldi noticed the metallic glint at the corners of the taut mouth.
Inspector Amaldi has enough problems. A city choked by a pestilent rubbish strike, a beautiful student harassed by a telephone stalker, a colleague dying of cancer and the mysterious disappearance of arson files concerning the city's orp
hanage. Then the bodies begin to appear.
This novel of violence and decay, with its vividly portrayed characters, takes place over a few oppressive weeks in an unnamed Italian city that strongly evokes Genoa.
The Italian press refers to Di Fulvio as a grittier, Italian Thomas Harris, and Eyes of Crystal, the film of the novel, was launched at the 2004 Venice Film Festival.
" A novel that caresses and kisses in order to violate the reader with greater ease." Rolling Stone
"A powerful psycho-thriller of spine-shivering intensity ... written with immense intelligence and passionate menace. Not to be read alone at night." The Times
"A wonderful first novel that will seduce the fans of deranged murderers in the style of Hannibal Lecter. And beautifully written to boot." RTL
SOMEONE ELSE
Tonino Benacquista
"A great read from one of France's best crime writers. A tale peppered with humour, unpredictable twists and a healthy dose of suspense. It all makes for a cracking read, with witty insights into the vagaries of human nature." Guardian
Who hasn't wanted to become "someone else"? The person you've always wanted to be ... the person who won't give up half way to your dreams and desires?
One evening two men who have just met at a Paris tennis club make a bet: they give each other exactly three years to radically alter their lives. Thierry, a picture framer with a steady clientele, has always wanted to be a private investigator. Nicolas is a shy, teetotal executive trying not to fall off the corporate ladder. But becoming someone else is not without risk; at the very least, the risk of finding yourself.
"Benacquista writes with humor and verve. This novel is less a mystery than a deftly constructed diptych of existential escapism: each story offers a unique map to new possibilities in the midst of suffocating lives." Rain "Taxi
"This has been a big hit in France, and it is easy to see why - Thierry's attempts to slip into a story by Simenon and Nicolas's explosive encounter with vodka make for unexpected, cynical comedy." The Times
"Exuberantly written, Benacquista's book is another triumph for the genre-bending approach to crime fiction." 'T'angled Web
Winner of the RTL-LIRE Prize.
A WALK IN THE DARK
Gianrico Carofiglio
"Carofiglio writes crisp, ironical novels that are as much love stories and philosophical treatises as they are legal thrillers." New Yorker
When Martina accuses her ex-boyfriend - the son of a powerful local judge - of assault and battery, no witnesses can be persuaded to testify on her behalf and one lawyer after another refuses to represent her. Guido Guerrieri knows the case could bring his legal career to a premature and messy end but he cannot resist the appeal of a hopeless cause. Nor deny an attraction to Sister Claudia, the young woman in charge of the shelter where Martina is living, who shares his love of martial arts and his virulent hatred of injustice.
Gianrico Carofiglio is an anti-Mafia prosecutor in southern Italy. A Walk in the Dark, his second novel featuring defence counsel Guerrieri, follows on from the success of Involuntary Witness.
PRAISE FOR A WALK IN THE DARK
"This novel raises the standard for crime fiction. Carofiglio's deft touch has given us a story that is both literary and gritty - and one that speeds along like the best legal thrillers. His insights into human nature - good and bad - are breathtaking." Jeffery Deaver
"A Walk in the Dark, features an engagingly complex, emotional and moody defence lawyer, Guido Guerrieri, who takes on cases shunned by his colleagues. In passing, Carofiglio provides a fascinating insight into the workings of the Italian criminal justice system." Observer
"Part legal thriller, part insight into a man fighting his own demons. Every character in Carofiglio's fiction has a story to tell and they are always worth hearing ... this powerfully affecting novel benefits from veracity as well as tight writing." Daily Mail