Books to Look Forward To From Europa Editions

January 2021 

The third and final installment in the remarkable Marseilles Trilogy (Total Chaos, Chourmo), Solea continues Jean-Claude Izzo’s distinctive brand of vibrant crime writing, skillfully evoking a time and place that has captured the hearts and imaginations of readers the world over. Marseilles’ simmering issues of race, politics, organized crime and big business come to a rolling boil. Ex-cop, loner, would-be bon vivant, Fabio Montale is back and his heartfelt cry against the criminal forces devastating his beloved Marseilles provides the touching conclusion to a trilogy that epitomizes the aspirations and ideals of the Mediterranean noir movement. 

May 2021

It’s the middle of a long hot summer on the French Mediterranean shore and the town is full of tourists. Sebag and Molina, two tired cops who are being slowly devoured by dull routine and family worries, deal with the day’s misdemeanors and petty complaints at the Perpignan police headquarters without a trace of enthusiasm. Out of the blue a young Dutch woman is brutally murdered on a beach at Argelès, and another disappears without a trace in the alleys of the city. A serial killer obsessed with Dutch women? Maybe. The media goes wild. Gilles Sebag finds himself thrust into the middle of a diabolical game. If he intends to salvage something—anything—he will have to put aside his domestic cares, forget his suspicions of his wife’s unfaithfulness, ignore his heart murmur, and get over his existential angst. “He waits joylessly, patiently, and lets himself go. The stone house may end up being his grave. Who’s doing what, who’s chasing who? Who is the mouse, and who’s the cat?” Summertime, All the Cats are Bored is by Phillippe Georget.

June 2021

In the Shadow of the Fire is by Hervé Le Corre. A breathless criminal investigation set against the bloody canvas of the Paris Commune The Paris Commune’s “bloody week” sees the climax of the savagery of the clashes between the Communards and the French Armed Forces loyal to Versailles. Amid the shrapnel and the chaos, while the entire west side of Paris is a field of ruins, a photographer fascinated by the suffering of young women takes “suggestive” photos to sell to a particular clientele. Young women begin disappearing, and when Caroline, a seamstress who volunteers at a first aid station, is counted among the missing, her fiancé Nicolas, a member of the Commune’s National Guard, and Communal security officer Antoine, sets off independently in search of her. Their race against the clock to find her takes them through the shell-shocked streets of Paris, and introduces them to a cast of fascinating characters. 

Mediterranean Noir: Jean-Claude Izzo, Massimo Carlotto, Maurizio de Giovanni by Daniela Petracco.

In celebration of Europa Edition’s World Noir Season, UK director of Europa Editions Daniela Petracco blogs about Mediterranean Noir.

At long last it’s sunny and warm outside and we can imagine – however fleetingly – we are on the shores of the Mediterranean.  Blue skies and bright sunshine, almost as summery as Marseilles or Naples.  Bright sunshine and blue skies can dazzle but we only need to don our shades in order to see there is a very dark side to these sun-kissed locales.  The books in Europa’s World Noir collection explore this dark side. 

The criminal underbelly of Marseilles, the city with the highest incidence of gun crime in Europe, is Jean-Claude Izzo’s domain.  Izzo shot to fame overnight in France when Gallimard published the first volume of The Marseilles Trilogy.  One of those authors lucky enough to be appreciated both by critics and the reading public, he believed that the way to really know a city is through the crimes that are committed there.  That’s exactly what he does for Marseille, exploring the racial and social tensions that lie at the heart of this apparently paradisiac city, in writing that is at once lyrical and mercilessly hard-boiled. 

The Marseilles Trilogy is now available in the UK for the first time in Howard Curtis’ exquisite translation, at the same time as we’re reissuing the three volumes in the US.  Once you’ve read Total Chaos, you’ll be compelled to continue with Chourmo and Solea to following ex-cop Fabio Montale as he travels through the city and the ruins of his career.

With the Trilogy we are launching also a little companion volume, Garlic, Mint & Sweet Basil, a selection of essays and short writings, a treat for lovers of Jean-Claude Izzo, who died prematurely in 2000. 

Italian writer Massimo Carlotto is a long-time admirer of Izzo’s writing, and also a subscriber to the idea that a place is best known through the crimes committed there.  From the affluent North-East of Italy, the hinterland of Venice, he is a meticulous researcher with personal contacts from the criminal world and the police.  The stories he tells in his violent, sparely written novels, are all based on real events, true crimes that we have not yet heard all about as they are still being investigated – or have been successfully buried!  In a region of Italy where politics and organised crime are inextricably linked in a merry-go-round of illegal speculation, prostitution, fraud and money laundering, he manages to avoid the fate of Roberto Saviano – the author of Gomorra, who’s been living under police protection since his book, and the film based on it, became an international sensation – by keeping his stories strictly within the boundaries of fiction.   

Carlotto is a master at creating deeply unsympathetic characters.  Giorgio Pellegrini, the anti-hero of The Goodbye Kiss and of the new At the End of a Dull Day, is a truly nasty piece of work.  Violent and misogynistic, never touched by moral considerations and utterly ruthless, especially when his own well-being is at stake, Pellegrini is nonetheless, or maybe precisely because of this, a compelling figure.   When the powerful politician he works for as “fixer” attempts to defraud him and put him under the strict control of the criminal organisation “ndrangheta”, he is quick to shrug off his relatively tranquil lifestyle in his quest for survival and revenge, and quickly learns that murdering people is a bit like riding a bicycle.

Also out in May, the second book in the series The Seasons of Commissario Ricciardi.  Blood Curse by Maurizio de Giovanni is, again in tune with the weather, the Springtime volume.  In the UK it comes after I Will Have Vengeance, published by Hersilia Press last year and shortlisted for the International Dagger Award.  In June there will be a further taste of de Giovanni’s skills when British readers will be able to read the standalone thriller The Crocodile, to be published by Abacus.  A nice upward trajectory for this author, and proof that fiction in translation is making inroads in the UK!

Back to Commissario Ricciardi, this atmospheric series is set in Naples in the 1930s, and built around a central character who has the singular gift – or rather curse – to be able to see the lingering shadows of those who have recently died a violent death, and hear their very last thought.  You would think this helpful to a police inspector involved in a murder inquiry but those last words are often cryptic and difficult to place in context.  Blood Curse, like the previous book, is a page turner full of local colour, much of it of a dark hue, as de Giovanni tells the story of a city where poverty and extreme wealth face each other at close quarters; where exponents of the camorra and grandees of the fascist regime are often closely linked, if not the very same; and where in the everyday scramble for something better emotions can run very high indeed. 

More about these titles in our free World Noir Reader – a selection of essays and extracts from the novels we’re publishing this season.  The digital edition of the World Noir reader can be downloaded following these links: epub (Nook), mobi (Kindle) or PDF.  Or tweet me @DanielaPetracco for a bound copy (until stocks last….).  You can also contact her by email.  Europa Editions may also be found on Facebook.

Books to Look Forward to From Europa Editions

Ricciardi sees and hears the final seconds in the lives of victims of violent deaths.  It is both a gift and a curse.  It has helped him become one of the most acute and successful homicide detectives in Naples police force.  But it has taken an emotional toll on him.  He drinks too much and sleeps too little.  Other than his loyal friend Brigadier Maione, he has no friends.  Naples, 1931, in a dingy apartment in a poor neighbourhood the victim, Carmela Calise an elderly woman moonlighting as a fortune-teller and moneylender has been viciously beaten to death.  Then Ricciardi and his deputy Maione arrive at the scene and start asking questions no one wants to answer.  In her decrepit apartment, she would receive clients, among them, some of the city’s rich and powerful, predicting their futures in such a way as to manipulate and deceive.  She had many enemies, those who have been manipulated by her lies, disappointed by her prophecies or destroyed by her machinations.  Blood Curse: The Springtime of Commissario Ricciard is the second book in the Commissario Ricciard series by Maurizio de Giovanni and is due to be published in May 2013.

Garlic, Basil and Sweet Basil is by Jean-Claude Izzo and is due to be published in May 2013.  Available for the first time in English in Howard Curtis's brilliant translation this collection of personal essays shows Izzo at his most contemplative and insightful.  He writes beautifully about the city he loved, the sea to which he belonged, and the literary movement that made him famous.  A must-read for all lovers of Izzo's Marseilles Trilogy.

Giorgio Pellegrini, the unforgettable hero of The Goodbye Kiss, has been living an "honest" life for eleven 

years.  But that's about to change.  His lawyer has been deceiving him and now Giorgio is forced into service as an unwilling errand boy for an organised crime syndicate.  At one time, Giorgio wouldn't have thought twice about robbing, kidnapping and killing in order to get what he wanted, but these days he realises he's too old in the tooth to face his enemies head-on.  To return to his peaceful life as a successful businessman he's going to have to find another way to shake off the mob.  Fortunately, though Giorgio’s circumstances may have changed, deep down he’s still the ruthless killer he used to be.  At The End of a Dull Day is by Massimo Carlotto and is due to be published in May 2013.

Twenty-eight year old Jana is a Mapuche, one of those people of the earth who roamed the most fertile tracts of the South American pampas for over two thousand years before being transformed overnight into outlaws by the Argentinean constitution.  Long black hair, big almond-shaped eyes ravishing features, tall … but with small breasts, breasts that stopped growing following a violent attack by the Argentinean police when she was a child.  Jana is a sculptor who prostitutes herself down at the docks to make ends meet.  She is connected, as if by a blood bond, to Miguel, a.k.a. Paula, who also works in the docks.  When the emasculated corpse of a transvestite is found at the Port de la Boca, Jana turns for help and protection to private investigator Ruben Calderón.  Calderón.  Is a grizzled investigator who had been working tirelessly for the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, searching for any trace of los desaparecidos and their odious tormentors.  Together, Jana and Ruben will plunge into the corrupt beating heart of the Argentinian political system on the hunt for a vicious murderer. Mapuche is by Caryl Férey and is due to be published in July 2013.

For the first time, Carlo Lucarelli's entire De Luca trilogy is gathered in one omnibus edition.  In 'Carte Blanche', it is April 1945 and a brutal murder on the good side of town lands Commissario De Luca in the middle of a hornet's nest during the final frenetic days of the Salo Republic where the rich and powerful mix drugs, sex, money and murder.  In 'The Damned Season', De Luca is on the run under an assumed identity to avoid reprisals for the role he played during the Fascist dictatorship.  Blackmailed by a member of the partisan police, De Luca must investigate a series of murders, becoming a reluctant player in Italy’s post-war power struggle.  In 'Via delle Oche’, the country’s fate is soon to be decided in bitterly contested national elections and a man is found dead in a brothel in 1948.  De Luca is unwilling to look the other way when evidence in the murder points to local politicians. The Trilogy is due to be published in June 2013.

  

It's the middle of a long hot summer on the French Mediterranean shore.  The town is full of tourists and at the Perpignan police headquarters, Sebag and Molina, two tired cops who are being slowly devoured by dull routine and family worries, deal with the day's misdemeanours and petty complaints.  But out of the blue, a young Dutch woman is brutally murdered on a beach at Argelès, and another disappears without a trace in the alleys of the city.  A serial killer obsessed with Dutch women?  Maybe.  The media goes wild.  Gilles Sebag finds himself thrust into the middle of a diabolical game.  To come out victorious, he will have to put aside his domestic cares, forget his suspicions of his wife’s unfaithfulness, ignore his heart murmur, and get over his existential angst.  Summertime All the Cats are Bored is by Philippe Georget and is due to be published in July 2013.

The report has just landed on Commissario Martusciello’s desk is unlike any other The lifeless body of  Neapolitan singer Jerry Vialdi has been found at the Naples football stadium; another corpse, this time an unidentified woman, has been discovered in the Bentegodi Stadium in Verona.  They were left with no signs of violence: the method and the madness point to a daring challenge for the police, who has no idea where to begin.  All except for Superintendent Blanca Occhiuzzi: beautiful, blind from birth, forced by the dark that envelopes to perceive the world through four senses, she feels the fear in people, their guilt and their innocence.  It is she who takes Martusciello by the hand guiding him into the mind of a murderer with her very female, very sensual intuition.  It is as if he were the blind one.  Three, Imperfect Number is by Patrizia Rinaldi and is due to be published in August 2013.

Europa Editions are also due to reissue Jean Claude Izzo’s Marseilles Trilogy and Minotaur by Benjamin Tammuz in May 2013.