The Black Cats Bookshop: A Novel

The Black Cats Bookshop in Southern Italy has everything a crime fiction lover could dream of: shelves stacked with Christie, Penny, Osman, and King, a book club full of amateur detectives who once solved a real-life cold case . . . and a terrifying masked killer on the loose.

Inside the bookshop that owes its name to former stray cats Miss Marple and Poirot, who wandered in one day and decided to stay, grumpy bookseller Marzio Montecristo meets weekly with a group of self-appointed crime experts: a melancholy pipe-smoking pensioner, an elderly woman obsessed with bloody thrillers, a lively Franciscan monk partial to historical crime novels, and a goth girl who seems to have murderous fantasies of her own. The cats attend as well, of course.

But there is a killer afoot. Thanks to their literary expertise, Marzio and his club once solved a baffling cold case within days, spotting parallels between the real crime and plotlines from books they had read. Now, confounded by a series of brutal murders, policewoman Angela Dimase must turn to the unlikeliest of consultants: Marzio Montecristo’s book club.

With wit, warmth, lightness of touch, and countless loving nods to the great works that shaped the mystery genre, Piergiorgio Pulixi rewrites the rules of cozy crime fiction, delivering a story that will appeal to everyone who loves a good crime novel.