Metropolitan Catania, and Tony's barbeques are a neighbourhood sensation. Each weekend the party girls rub shoulders with elegant Mafiosi - and no wonder, since Tony's uncle Sal runs the local show.

And so had the finger not pointed at two of Sal's most trusted men, and at Nick Palumbo, Tony's best friend, it would have been an ordinary murder. But it wasn't, and Lou Sciortino, newly arrived from New York, finds himself on the trail. Gin and tonic in hand, negotiating hairdressers, directors, small shopkeepers, Sicilian wives, and far from his safe job laundering mob money at Starship Pictures, the life he finds in sunny Sicily is not the one his over-protective family had in mind.

In a world where no one is truly anyone's friend, killers have sidelines in amaretti, the nicest people can still bring on the apocalypse, and grandfathers are to be feared above all men - can the inimitable Lou solve the crime? Ottavio Cappellani's exhilarating debut has taken Europe by storm: darkly funny and truly stylish, this is a page-turner that sets its sights on Italy's biggest cliche and explodes it from every angle.

`Cappellani's Catania has the brutality of Quentin Tarantino and the trash of Pedro Almodovar' Corriere della Sera

`Brilliant dialogue . . . All the plot and rhythm of great cinema' Vanity Fair

`Finally the post-modern and metropolitan Sicily has found its ideal chronicler . . . A completely exhilarating story' La Repubblica

`A debut novel as sharp as a knife' GQ