Bitter Lemon Press devotes itself to publishing crime fiction in translation.

At a time when translated crime novels outsell almost all other sub-genres of translated fiction (the likes of Irène Nemirovsky's Suite Française and Carlos Ruiz Zafón's The Shadow of the Wind aside), this is a canny move.

'Cosy whodunits are not to our taste,' they say. 'Quirky, literary, seamy, sexy, funny crime books that unveil the darker side of places you're likely to travel to – whether you're a real traveller or an armchair traveller – is what Bitter Lemon is all about.'

They firmly believe that tourists should read books from (or set in) the countries they are visiting. Travellers, they believe, cannot begin to understand the cultures they are experiencing while sitting on a beach reading a bestseller brought from home – and nothing reveals a nation's psyche more than the way they commit the crimes that they do. 'Our books have a strong sense of place and shed a different light on local life than a guidebook or a Nobel Prize laureate'. Quite.

So which countries are covered by the Bitter Lemon list? Cuba, France and Italy feature heavily, but books by much neglected German-speaking writers and, more recently, authors from Argentina and Belgium have been published to acclaim. Many of these writers are locals who have had jobs as prosecutors, journalists or essayists but who now dedicate themselves to writing crime fiction.

Bitter Lemon's bestselling authors are Gianrico Carofiglio, the former anti-Mafia prosecutor from Puglia; Leonardo Padura, a Cuban author living in Havana; and, to their surprise, the dead Swiss writer Friedrich Glauser, who wrote in the 1940s and had never been translated into English before. Glauser was a morphine addict who spent most of his adult life in psychiatric wards and prison, and even did a stint in the Foreign Legion in Morocco. He wrote five crime novels with the same hero, the intuitive and overweight Sergeant Studer of the Bern police force.

Gianfranco Carofiglio has had an equally colourful life. A bestselling author and member of the Italian Senate, he made his name as a prominent procuratore della Repubblica. In the nineties, he arrested Puglian Mob bosses like Il Cecato (the Blind Man) and Lo Spazzino (the Street-Cleaner); more recently he broke up a syndicate that enslaved prostitutes and sold their newborn babies.

Padura, by happy contrast, is a long-form investigative journalist turned political essayist, screenwriter and crime fiction novelist. He also loves baseball. Phew.

Discover for yourself, then, these extraordinary, previously undiscovered crime writers and enter a whole world of seedy worlds courtesy of Bitter Lemon Press.

Visit the Bitter Lemon Press website

Bitter Lemon authors

Niccolo Ammaniti
Tonino Benacquista
Gianrico Carofiglio
Luca Di Fulvio
Rolo Diez
Garry Disher
Jörg Fauser
Alice Ferney
Friedrich Glauser
Petra Hammesfahr
Hans Werner Kettenbach
Saskia Noort
Günter Ohnemus
Leonardo Padura
Chantal Pelletier
Elwood Reid
Giampiero Rigosi