The Master of Knots

“Dangerous, edgy noir crime fiction at its absolute finest and certain to be one of my books of the year” featuring PI Marco “The Alligator” Burrati (reviewingtheevidence.com).

A woman has gone missing. Her husband, too ashamed to admit to the police that he and his wife were part of a ring of sexual adventurers that organized sadomasochistic orgies, turns instead to the Alligator. Marco Burrati enters a depraved demiworld where ferocious deviates prey upon lonely victims. But the savagery of this world is only the first surprise this investigation holds in store for the Alligator. Encountering such violence and desperation triggers memories of his own time in prison. And while the unwritten rule of ex-cons is that you must never talk about your experiences behind bars, the Alligator and his two longtime associates, Max the Memory and Beniamino Rossini, are forced to confront demons they thought long buried.

In The Master of Knots, “the reigning king of Mediterranean noir,” Massimo Carlotto, gives his readers a work of hardboiled noir fiction that is darker than ever before as he digs into the shadowy corners of human experience (The Boston Phoenix). This stunning novel sets a new high-water mark in the literary history of the Mediterranean Noir novel.

“Brooding, sexual, and connected to Italy’s socio-political climate . . . Carlotto’s tight prose makes for a quick and satisfying journey into a world absent of clear-cut morality.” —Publishers Weekly

“The author shows a sure grasp of the double lives of BDSM devotees for whom unmasking would mean calamity.” —Kirkus Reviews