Fever (29 page)
Authors: Friedrich Glauser
HAVANA RED
Leonardo Padura
Winner of the celebrated Café de Gijon Prize, the Novela Negra Prize and the Hammett Prize.
“A scorching novel from a star of Cuban fiction. Lt Conde's quest follows the basic rhythm of the whodunit, but Padura syncopates it with brilliant literary riffs on Cuban sex, society, religion, even food.”
Independent
On August 6th, the day on which the Catholic Church celebrates the Feast of Transfiguration, the body of a strangled transvestite is discovered in the undergrowth of the Havana Woods. He is wearing a beautiful red evening dress and the red ribbon with which he was asphyxiated is still round his neck. To the consternation of Mario Conde, in charge of the investigation, the victim turns out to be Alexis Arayán, the son of a highly respected diplomat. His investigation begins with a visit to the home of the “disgraced” dramatist Alberto Marqués, with whom the murdered youth was living. Marqués, a man of letters and a former giant of the Cuban theatre, helps Conde solve the crime. In the baking heat of the Havana summer, Conde also unveils a dark, turbulent world of Cubans who live without dreaming of exile, grappling with food shortages and wounds from the Angolan war.
Leonardo Padura
was born in 1955 in Havana and lives in Cuba. He is a novelist, essayist, journalist and scriptwriter.
Havana Red
has been published in Cuba, Mexico, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Germany and France, and is the first of the Havana quartet featuring Lieutenant Mario Conde, a tropical Marlowe, to be published in English.
“So many enchanting memories, sultry Cuban nights and music in this novel that you let the author take you by the hand, impatient to find out what comes next.”
Lire
“Nothing is what it seems in this case, which has less to do with crime than with the struggle for identity in a corrupt society where outsiders are exiled in their own country.
Daily Mail
£8.99/$13.95
Crime paperback original, ISBN 1â904738â09â5
IN MATTO'S REALM
Friedrich Glauser
“Glauser's second novel involving the dour Sergeant Studer, a Swiss Maigret albeit with a strong sense of the absurd. Studer investigates the death of an asylum director following the escape of a child murderer. A despairing plot about the reality of madness and life, leavened at regular intervals with strong doses of bittersweet irony. The idiosyncratic investigation and its laconic detective have not aged one iota. Who said the past never changes.”
Guardian
“Glauser was among the best European crime writers of the inter-war years. This dark mystery set in a lunatic asylum follows a labyrinthine plot where the edges between reality and fantasy are blurred. The detail, place and sinister characters are so intelligently sculpted that the sense of foreboding is palpable.”
Glasgow Herald
A child murderer escapes from an insane asylum in Bern. The stakes get higher when Sergeant Studer discovers the director's body, neck broken, in the boiler room of the madhouse. The intuitive Studer is drawn into the workings of an institution that darkly mirrors the world outside. Even he cannot escape the pull of the no-man's-land between reason and madness where Matto, the spirit of insanity, reigns.
Translated into four languages,
In Matto's Realm
was originally published in 1936. This European crime classic, now available for the first time in English, is the second in the Sergeant Studer series from Bitter Lemon Press.
Friedrich Glauser
was born in Vienna in 1896. Often referred to as the Swiss Simenon, he died, aged forty-two, a few days before he was due to be married. Diagnosed a schizophrenic, addicted to morphine and opium, he spent the greater part of his life in psychiatric wards, insane asylums and prison. His Sergeant Studer novels have ensured his place as a cult figure in Europe.
“
In Matto's Realm
, written in 1936 when psychoanalysis was a novelty to the layman and forensic science barely recognized, makes gripping reading as Studer questions both staff and patients and tries to make sense of the inscrutable Deputy Director's behaviour.”
Sunday Telegraph
£8.99/$13.95
Crime paperback original, ISBN 1â904738â06â0
BLACK ICE
Hans Werner Kettenbach
“A beautifully translated thriller, not a drop of blood on its pages. The nastiness takes place off-stage which makes it all the more threatening.”
BBC 2 “Culture”
“A natural story teller who, just like Patricia Highsmith, is interested in teasing out the catastrophes that result from the banal coincidences of daily life.”
Weltwoche
Erika, an attractive local heiress, is married to Wallmann, a man with expensive tastes. When she falls to her death near their lakeside villa, the police conclude it was a tragic accident. Scholten, a long-time employee of Erika's, isn't so sure. He knows a thing or two about the true state of her marriage and suspects an almost perfect crime. Scholten's maverick investigation into the odd, inexplicable details of the death scene soon buys him a ticket for a most dangerous ride.
This beautifully crafted thriller set in a European world of small-town hypocrisy was made into a film in 1998. It is written by an essayist, scriptwriter and best-selling novelist whose work is now available in English for the first time.
“
Black Ice
isn't just a class crime novel. It is one of the most beautifully told stories of our years, in which humorous
noir
dialogue and poetry flourish side by side.”
Stern
£8.99/$13.95
Crime paperback original, ISBN 1â904738â08â7
GOAT SONG
Chantal Pelletier
Winner of the Grand Prix du Roman Noir de Cognac
“More than an intriguing mystery. It reveals a picture of contemporary Paris unseen by tourists, with two fascinating central characters.”
The Sunday Telegraph
The naked bodies of a star male dancer and a beautiful young girl have been found entwined together, murdered in a dressing room of the Moulin Rouge. A junkie is killed in a nearby flat, his throat chewed open, the teeth-marks human. Seemingly unconnected, these deaths form part of a sinister pattern involving crack dealers and addicts, wild sex parties and shady property deals.
In charge of both investigations is Maurice Laice. Depressed by what is happening to his beloved Montmartre and exhausted by the emptiness of his love life, Maurice is plagued by a female boss who bombards him with tales of her sexual exploits. Yet they make a good team, each obsessed for different reasons by the crime at hand. Together, they start to uncover a twisted trail of fear and broken dreams, greed and revenge that reaches from Corsica and Algeria into the very heart of old Paris.
Chantal Pelletier
, born in Lyon, began her career as an actor. She founded a theatre company in Paris and is the author of novels, essays, plays and film scripts. It is not unusual to find her engaged simultaneously as author, director and actor in the same project.
“Chantal Pelletier is a wonderful story teller; she captures your heart in three short sentences, and takes you through the gamut of emotions, from laughter to tears. A master of funny, bittersweet dialogue. A classic
roman noir
hero, the world weary inspector, is completely reinvented.”
Le Monde
£8.99/$13.95
Crime paperback original, ISBN 1â904738â03â6
THE SNOWMAN
Jörg Fauser
“A gritty and slyly funny story. About the life of the underdog, the petty criminal, the fixer, the prostitute and the junkie. With a healthy dose of wit.”
Cath Staincliffe, author of the
Sal Kilkenny
series
“German author Jörg Fauser was the Kafka of crime writing.”
Independent
Blum's found five pounds of top-quality Peruvian cocaine in a suitcase. His adventure started in Malta, where he was trying to sell porn magazines, the latest in a string of dodgy deals that never seem to come off. A left-luggage ticket from the Munich train station leads him to the cocaine. Now his problems begin in earnest. Pursued by the police and drug traffickers, the luckless Blum falls prey to the frenzied paranoia of the cocaine addict and dealer. His desperate and clumsy search for a buyer takes him from Munich to Frankfurt, and finally to Ostend. This is a fast-paced thriller written with acerbic humour, a hardboiled evocation of drug-fuelled existence and a penetrating observation of those at the edge of German society.
“Jörg Fauser was a fascinating train wreck: a fiercely intelligent literary critic who also wrote the occasional nudie-magazine filler; a junkie who got clean in his thirties only to become an alcoholic; a tragic figure who died mysteriously at 43 in a 1987 Autobahn accident. Oh, and along the way he managed to crank out one of the most indelible crime novels in Greman history. Fauser writes with a gimlet eye and a black, acerbic (so, German) wit, creating an unflinchingly brilliant tale of a perspective â the outsider among outsiders â he knew all too well.”
Ruminator
£8.99/$13.95
Crime paperback original, ISBN 1â904738â05â2
THE RUSSIAN PASSENGER
Günter Ohnemus
“A recommended summer thriller. High-octane odyssey across the new Europe and eventually the United States. All the makings of a new genre â the Russian mafia road movie.”
The Times
“Much to enjoy in this sharp pacy
roman noir
. Packs an emotional punch rare in a thriller.”
Independent
At fifty the good Buddhist takes to the road, leaving all his belongings behind. His sole possession is a begging bowl. That's fine. That's how it should be. The problem was, there were four million dollars in my begging bowl and the mafia were after me. It was their money. They wanted it back, and they also wanted the girl, the woman who was with me: Sonia Kovalevskaya
.
So begins the story of Harry Willemer, a taxi driver and his passenger, an ex-KGB agent and wife of a Russian Mafioso. In an atmosphere of intense paranoia
The Russian Passenger
follows their flight from the hit-men sent to recover the cash. This is not only a multifaceted thriller about murder, big money and love, but also a powerful evocation of the cruel history that binds Russia and Germany.
Günter Ohnemus
, born in 1946, lives in Munich and writes novels, essays and translations. He has written three collections of short stories and a best-seller for teenagers. This is his first novel to be translated into English.
“A road adventure that reads like a movie, . . . . an alternately dark and sunny journey of redemption, with German cabbie and Russian passenger earnestly trying to resolve their nationalist prejudices and absolve their collective guilt â in colorful settings of course.”
New York Times
£9.99/$14.95
Crime paperback original, ISBN 1â904738â02â8
TEQUILA BLUE
Rolo Diez
“Like a Peckinpah movie: violent, funny, sad, as hot as salsa, as tasty as tacos and twice as enjoyable.”
Independent on Sunday
It's not easy being a cop in Mexico City.
Meet Carlos Hernandez, Carlito to his women. He's a police detective with a complicated life. A wife, a mistress, children by both and a paycheck that never seems to arrive. This being Mexico, 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, murdered prostitutes and corrupt politicians. A savagely funny, sexy crime adventure that is a biting satire of life in Mexico.
Rolo Diez
, born in Argentina in 1940, was imprisoned for two years during the military dictatorship and forced into exile. He now lives in Mexico City, where he works as a novelist, screenwriter and journalist.
Both a scathing an picaresque comedy, a biting and spicy concoction. Just like tequila.”
Le Monde
£8.99/$13.95
Crime paperback original, ISBN 1â904738â04â4
HOLY SMOKE
Tonino Benacquista
“An iconoclastic chronicle of small-time crooks and desperate capers, with added Gallic and Italian flair. Wonderful fun.”
Guardian
“This prizewinning novel is guaranteed to keep you up late at night, driven to discover the ending. It's exciting, funny and bizarrely even includes tips on cooking Italian food; it makes you glad they decided to translate the novel into English.”
Coventry Evening Telegraph
Some favours simply cannot be refused. Tonio agrees to write a love letter for Dario, a low-rent Paris gigolo. When Dario is murdered, a single bullet to the head, Tonio finds his friend has left him a small vineyard somewhere east of Naples. The wine is undrinkable but an elaborate scam has been set up. The smell of easy money attracts the unwanted attentions of the Mafia and the Vatican, and the unbridled hatred of the locals. Mafiosi aren't choir boys, and monsignors can be very much like Mafiosi. A darkly comic, iconoclastic tale told by an author of great verve and humour.
Tonino Benacquista
, born in France of Italian immigrants, dropped out of film studies to finance his writing career. After being, in turn, a museum night-watchman, a train guard on the ParisâRome line and a professional parasite on the Paris cocktail circuit, he is now a highly successful author of fiction and film scripts.
“An entertainingly cynical story. I read it in one sitting.”
Observer
“Much to enjoy in the clash of cultures and superstitions, in a stand-off between the Mafia and the Vatican. And a tasty recipe for poisoning your friends with pasta. Detail like this places European crime writing on a par with its American counterpart.”
Belfast Telegraph
£8.99/$13.95
Crime paperback original, ISBN 1â904738â01âX