Night Bus »

Born in 1962, Rigosi lives and works in Bologna. He is a much acclaimed literary critic, short story and song writer as well as a producer of radio programs on cinema noir and mystery literature. Ann Goldstein works for The New Yorker but her passion is translating from Italian. She has written prize winning translations of Roberto Calasso and Pier Paolo Pasolini.

Savagely funny crime adventure with an Italian twist.

The New Yorker

Francesco is a gambling-addicted bus driver in Bologna, with a thuggish debt collector on his trail; Leila is a smart dame with a great pair of legs, who each night looks for a man to bed, drug, and rob. In perfect noir fashion, the two become uneasy allies, trying to escape a pair of vicious intelligence agents after Leila unknowingly swipes a mysterious document from a victim’s apartment. Rigosi somewhat overdoes character quirks—one agent has a condition that leads him to constantly leak tears as he slices apart his victims—but an ever-expanding cast of creeps and criminals keeps the plot accelerating, and he describes the dripping of blood and the angle of a broken neck as lovingly as the preparation of a nice eggplant parmigiana.