Forthcoming Books From Bitter Lemon Press

January 2024 

Tokyo, 1958. Teiko marries Kenichi Uhara, ten years her senior, an advertising man recommended by a go-between. After a four-day honeymoon, Kenichi vanishes. Teiko travels to the coastal and snow-bound city of Kanazawa, where Kenichi was last seen, to investigate his disappearance. When Kenichi’s brother comes to help her, he is murdered, poisoned in his hotel room.  Soon, Teiko discovers that her husband’s disappearance is tied up with the so-called “pan-pan girls”, women who worked as prostitutes catering to American GIs after the war. Now, ten years later, as the country is recovering, there are those who are willing to take extreme measures to hide that past. Point Zero is by Seichõ Matsumoto.

March 2024

The Translator is by Harriet Crawley. Clive Franklin, a Russian language expert in the Foreign Office, is summoned unexpectedly to Moscow to act as translator for the British Prime Minister. His life is turned on its head when, after more than a decade, he discovers that his former lover, Marina Volina, is now the interpreter to the Russian President. At the embassy, Clive learns of a Russian plot to cut the undersea cables linking the US to the UK which would paralyse communications and collapse the Western economy. Marina stuns Clive with the news that she’s ready to help stop the attack, betraying her country for a new identity and a new life. Clive becomes the go-between, relaying Marina’s intelligence to MI6 back in London. What are the odds that two lovers, running the Moscow marathon with the FSB on their backs, can save Western Europe from economic meltdown?

May 2024

Hot Stage is by Anita Nair. A Bangalore police procedural featuring Inspector Borei Gowda, a splendidly grumpy, hard-drinking, deeply flawed character whose chaotic home life includes an absent wife, an estranged son and an enigmatic mistress. It all begins when elderly Professor Mudgood is murdered in his kitchen at 2 am on a November night. As Gowda investigates, he discovers that many people might have wanted the professor dead. He had been a vocal critic of the Hindutva Movement whose ethnic nationalism has gained traction recently, often at the expense of Islamic and Christian minorities. Also disturbing is the fact that the professor's extensive property in the centre of bustling Bangalore would be a gold mine in the hands of ruthless developers with access to corrupt politicians. And there is no shortage of such characters, even in the professor's immediate entourage. The fast-paced plot has many surprising twists leading to an ominous end, but police work is not just about going out and catching crooks. All kinds of office politics, caste politics and other considerations make Gowda's life complicated. 

June 2024

October 1944, in the Republic of Salò, a German puppet state in the north of Italy and the last fascist stronghold in the country. After months of ferocious fighting on the Gothic Line, Colonel Martin Bora of the Wehrmacht is handed a new, red-hot case. Transferred to the town of Salò on the shore of Lake Garda, he must investigate the theft of a precious painting of Venus by Titian, stolen with uncanny ease from a local residence. While Bora’s inquiry proceeds among many difficulties, discovering three dead bodies throws an even more sinister light on the scene. The victims are female, very beautiful, apparently dead by their own hand but in fact, elegantly murdered. Is it the work of a serial killer, or are the homicides somehow related to the stolen Venus? Why were intriguing clues left behind for Bora to find? And why is there an official attempt to make the investigator himself appear as the culprit? Caught in an unforeseeable web of events, hounded by the Gestapo (for years at his heels on the charge of anti-Nazi activities), hopelessly in love with an enigmatic, real-flesh “Venus,” Bora must resort to all his courage and ability – not only to solve the mystery and expose the perpetrator, but also, in a breathtaking crescendo, to try to save himself from the firing squad and secure an unlikely way out... The Venus of Salò by Ben Pastor.

July 2024

It all begins with Kalmann in hot water. He’s at the FBI Headquarters in Washington, arrested during the Jan 6, 2021 riots at the Capitol Building. All he wanted was to visit his American father in the US for the Christmas holidays – but his dad takes him (and a group of MAGA friends) to the protests in Washington to “regain the house which is ours”. He is promptly arrested during the riots. Thanks to sympathetic FBI agent Dakota Leen, he’s soon on a plane back to Iceland. But not before Dakota informs him that his recently deceased grandfather was on an FBI list of suspected Russian spies working in Iceland during the Cold War. Back home, Kalmann begins to suspect that his grandfather’s death from “heart failure” was a murder. His maverick investigation uncovers another assassination and takes him to the site of a US radar station abandoned in the 1970s. So, there are now two deaths to be solved and the threat of more to come. Much to do for our unlikely amateur detective who somehow never loses heart. Kalmann and the Sleeping Mountain is by Joachim B Schmidt.

Books to Look Forward to from Bitter Lemon Press

January 2020

On a stormy summer day the Aosawas, owners of a prominent local hospital, host a large birthday party. The occasion turns into tragedy when 17 people die from cyanide in their drinks. The only surviving links to what might have happened are a cryptic verse that could be the killer's, and the physician's bewitching blind daughter, Hisako, the only person spared injury. But the youth who emerges as the prime suspect commits suicide that October, effectively sealing his guilt while consigning his motives to mystery. The police are convinced that Hisako had a role in the crime, as are many in the town, including the author of a bestselling book about the murders written a decade after the incident, who was herself a childhood friend of Hisako' and witness to the discovery of the murders. The truth is revealed through a skilful juggling of testimony by different voices: family members, witnesses and neighbours, police investigators and of course the mesmerizing Hisako herself.  The Aosawa Murders is by Riku Onda. 

March 2020

The story takes place in the suffocating atmosphere of a social housing estate in the south of France. Sixteen-year-old Celine and her sister Jo, fifteen, dream of escaping to somewhere far from their daily routine, far from their surly, alcoholic father and uncaring mother, both struggling to make ends meet. That summer Celine falls pregnant, devastating news that reopens deep family wounds. Those of the mother Severine whose adolescence was destroyed by her early pregnancy and subsequent marriage with Manuel. Those of Manuel, grandson of Spanish immigrants, who takes refuge in alcoholism to escape the open disdain of his in-laws. Faced with Celine's refusal to name the father, Manuel needs a guilty party and Said, a childhood friend of the girls and conveniently Arab, seems to fit the role perfectly. In the suffocating heat of summer Manuel embarks on a drunken mission of revenge. A dark and upsetting account of an ailing society, filled with silent and murderous rage.  The Summer of Reckoning is by  Marion Brunet

June 2020

Deep as Death is by Katja Ivar.  Helsinki, March 1953. An unusually long and cold winter, everywhere frozen sea, ice-covered lakes and rivers. In a port city flooded with refugees, who cares if a young woman goes missing? An up-and-coming inspector who views this as an opportunity to advance his career. A heartbroken PI with a score to settle. They have yet to discover one thing: the most dangerous lies are those we tell ourselves. It all begins when Nellie, a prostitute working in a high-end brothel is found floating upside down in Helsinki Harbour. Not exactly a high priority case for the Helsinki police, so homicide chief Jokela passes the job to his former colleague Hella. It's beginning to look like a serial killer is at work when Elena, another lady of the night, narrowly escapes being driven into the harbour by her 19-year-old john. Problem was he had handcuffed her in the car. And to add further excitement to Hella's life, the madam is soon found dead in the garden outside the brothel.

July 2020

The Night of The Shooting Stars is by Ben Pastor.  It is just the beginning of a convulsed week, where danger lurks behind army headquarters, down sordid streets, and in the frightening Presidium of the Criminal Police. Bora is unexpectedly ordered by SS General Arthur Nebe, head of Kripo, to investigate the murder of a dazzling showman and clairvoyant, a major star since the days of the Weimar Republic. Bora's inquiry, supported by police inspector and former S.A member Florian Grimm, resurrects memories of the excessive and brilliant world of Jazz Age cabarets and locales. Around them, in the oppressive summer heat, constant allied bombing, war-weary Berlin teems with refugees and nearly a million foreign labourers. Soon enough the perceptive Bora realizes to his dismay that there is much more at stake than murder in a paranoid city where everyone suspects everyone, and where insistent rumours whisper about a conspiracy aimed at the very heart of the Nazi hierarchy. And then there is charming Emmy Pletsch, who works for Stauffenberg: could she be a key to understanding? Trying to solve the murder of the Weimar Prophet takes Martin Bora into the deadly whirlwind of an anguishing moral dilemma, as a German soldier and as a man. The 20 July plot and its dramatic implications as never told before.

Books to Look Forward to from Bitter Lemon Press

January 2017

Athenian Blues is by Pol Koutsakis.  Stratos hates being called a hitman. A conscientious fixer is what he is. He fixes problems that very few can deal with. Things that people are willing to pay handsomely to get done, without wanting to know about the small stuff. Stratos is their man, provided that his meticulous research shows him that the targets deserve their fate.   But now, in the midst of the Greek economic and political crisis, this film-noir loving assassin takes on the highest-profile case of his career. He finds himself caught between the most beloved lawyer in Greece, known as “the guardian of the poor”, and his actress wife, the most desirable woman in the country. They are both in dire need of his killing services, but which one is telling the truth? Helped by three childhood friends, Costas Dragas, a homicide cop, Teri, a transsexual high-class hooker and Maria, the passion of his life, he discovers that truth, in shattered loves and broken families, is, as ever, a relative thing.

March 2017

 

The Road to Ithaca is the fifth in the Martin Bora WWII mystery series by Ben Pastor. 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.

April 2017

Heretics is by Leonardo Padura.  Inspector Mario Conde is back in a sweeping novel of art theft, anti-semitism and family tragedy.  From Cuba during WWII to 17th Century Amsterdam and back to Havana today.  In 1939, the Saint Louis sails from Hamburg into Havana’s port with hundreds of Jewish refugees seeking asylum from the Nazi regime. From the docks, nine-year-old Daniel Kaminsky watches as the passengers, including his parents, become embroiled in a fiasco of Cuban corruption. But the Kaminskys have a treasure that they hope will save them: a Rembrandt portrait of Christ. Yet six days later the vessel is forced to leave the harbour with the family, bound for the horrors of Europe. The Kaminskys, along with their priceless heirloom, disappear.  Nearly seven decades later, the Rembrandt reappears in an auction house in London, prompting Daniel’s son to travel to Cuba to track down the story of the lost masterpiece. He hires Mario Conde, and together they navigate a web of deception and violence in the morally complex city of Havana.

May 2017

A darkly humorous, literary and psychological mystery set in a Boston still suffering from

the consequences of the financial crisis. Written with the pace and controlled violence of the best of Tarantino’s films, it is the story of Franck, a private detective from NY, a cokehead and a dandy, who , in a race against time and the local sheriff, investigates two brutal murders committed by what could be the same psychopath.   Breaking with many conventions of the genre, the novel holds a satirical mirror to our society by entering the minds of two men at the edge of sanity. Sheriff McCarthy, a church-going family man, is desperately trying to keep some sort of boundary between the sordidness of his investigations and his private life. He is also a man trying to keep faith in human nature and the order that should prevail in the world. But Franck, willing to kill for the sake of a good pun, dominates the story. He is a disturbing, violent, totally decadent character, always over dressed, an actor with too much make-up, a man always rushing to the bathroom for another line of coke, revealing the darker workings of the case with a blood curdling laugh.  Tree Drops of Blood and a cloud of Cocaine is by Quentin Mouron.

Books to look forward to from Bitter Lemon Press

Tito Ihaka, the unkempt, overweight Maori cop was demoted to Sergeant due to insubordination and pigheadedness. He investigates the unsolved killing of 17 year old girl at an election night party in a ritzy villa near Auckland. Ihaka is also embroiled in a very personal mystery. A freelance journalist has stumbled across information that Ihaka's father Jimmy, a trade union firebrand and renegade Marxist, didn't die of natural causes. The stories weave themselves into an exciting climax in an atmosphere of political manoeuvring and intrigue surrounding the USA's confrontation with New Zealand over its anti-nuclear stance. Fallout is by Paul Thomas and is due to be published in March 2015.

Tin Sky is by Ben Pastor and is due to be published in April 2015.  Ukraine, 1943. Having barely escaped the inferno of Stalingrad, Major Martin Bora is still serving on the Russian front as a German counterintelligence officer. At a time when weariness, disillusionment, and battle fatigue are a soldier's daily fare, Bora seems to be one of the few whose sanity is not marred by the horrors of war. Two Russian generals in his custody die within twenty-four hours of each other. Everything appears to exclude the likelihood of foul play, but Bora begins an investigation, a stubborn attempt to solve a mystery that will come much too close for comfort.

The novel is set in the Pantanal,the Brazilian lowlands bordering Bolivia. One bright Sunday on the banks of the Paraguay River, the narrator witnesses the fatal crash of a small ‘plane. He finds a kilo of cocaine in the dead pilot's backpack which he pockets . Thus begins a long slide into corruption. When the crash site is located several days later, the pilot's body is missing. Our hero gets involved in a busted cocaine deal and ends up owing a Bolivian drug gang so much money that blackmailing the wealthy family of the dead pilot seems to be the only way out. The family secretly agrees to pay serious money to recover the body of their son. Our hero doesn't have the pilot's body so someone else's will do. Or so he thinks.  The Body Snatcher is by Patricia Mello and is due to be published in June 2015.

Behind God’s Back is by Harri Nykanen and s due to be published in January 2015. There are two Jewish cops in all of Helsinki. One of them, Ariel Kafka, a lieutenant in the Violent Crime Unit, identifies himself as a policeman first, then a Finn, and lastly a Jew. Kafka is a religiously non-observant 40-something bachelor who is such a stubborn, dedicated policeman that he's willing to risk his career to get an answer. Murky circumstances surround his investigation of a Jewish businessman's murder. Neo-Nazi violence, intergenerational intrigue, shady loans – predictable lines of investigation lead to unpredictable culprits. But a second killing strikes closer to home, and the Finnish Security Police come knocking. The tentacles of Israeli politics and Mossad reach surprisingly far, once again wrapping Kafka in their sticky embrace. 

More Bloody Foreigners

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Four sparklingly original crime writers offer their perspectives on culture and society from different corners of Europe. As they say, tell me about your crimes and I'll tell you about your society.

Mariusz Czubaj, Marco Malvaldi, Andrej Nikolaidis, and Ben Pastor appear in conversation with Jake Kerridge, journalist and crime fiction critic for The Telegraph.

Mariusz Czubaj is a cultural anthropologist whose first novel featuring Rudolf Heinz, 21:37 (Stork Press, translated by Anna Hyde), won the High Callibre Award for the Best Polish Crime Novel.

Marco Malvaldi is the author of the Camillieri-endorsed Game for Five (Europa Editions) and The Art of Killing Well (MacLehose Press), both translated by Howard Curtis, a historical murder mystery featuring real-life 19th-century chef Pellegrino Artusi.

Andrej Nikolaidis is a controversial and outspoken journalist. In his novel The Coming (Istros Books, translated by Will Firth), set in a small Montenegrin town on the Adriatic, a detective sacrifices truth for the sake of telling his clients what they want to hear.

The third in Ben Pastor's crime series featuring Wehrmacht officer Martin von Bora, A Dark Song of Blood (Bitter Lemon Press), is set in Rome in 1944 as the Germans prepare to flee the city.

Organised by Bitter Lemon Press, Europa Editions, Istros Books, Maclehose Press, and Stork Press, with the support of the Arts Council England / Heritage Lottery Fund and the Polish Cultural Institute in London.

Magda Raczynska

Head of Literature

Polish Cultural Institute

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