by Simone Buchholz (T. Rachel Ward)
SYNOPSIS
When neatly packed male body parts wash up by the River Elbe, Hamburg State Prosecutor Chastity Riley and her colleagues begin a perplexing investigation.
As the murdered men are identified, it becomes clear that they all had a history of abuse towards women, leading Riley to wonder if it would actually be in society's best interests to catch the killers.
But when her best friend Carla is attacked, and the police show little interest in tracking down the offenders, Chastity takes matters into her own hands. As a link between the two cases emerges, horrifying revelations threaten Chastity's own moral compass, and put everything at risk…
REVIEW
I am a huge fan of all of the translated crime fiction published by Orenda Books but for some reason the Chastity Riley series was not on my radar. I read the blurb for The Kitchen and thought it sounded really interesting and now I am hooked on a new series!
What I really loved about this book was that it had short, snappy paragraphs that sometimes seemed to skip forwards in time. This was brilliant because it meant that there was no waffle and no unnecessary padding. Every event or conversation was important to the plot and by cutting scenes in this way it created an insanely addictive story and pace.
I loved the setting, I loved the characters and also the fact that the actual investigation kind of took a back seat. It was almost like background noise and whereas most crime novels will centre around the crime, this felt like a story about a group of people, living their lives, and one of them just happens to be a public prosecutor investigating a murder. This made it feel very real and meant that as a reader you really get to know the characters in depth. This doesn't mean that the crime/murders weren't important - the whole case was very dark and it was the kind of scenario that throws out more questions and discussion points than answers. It's been a while since I read a thriller with such a strong female lead - Chastity is a no-nonsense, solid character and I'm really excited to go back and read the previous novels because it's obvious that there's a good backstory there and she's had a lot to deal with.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR & TRANSLATOR
Simone Buchholz was born in Hanau in 1972. At university, she studied Philosophy and Literature, worked as a waitress and a columnist, and trained to be a journalist at the prestigious Henri-Nannen-School in Hamburg. In 2016, Simone Buchholz was awarded the Crime Cologne Award as well as runner-up in the German Crime Fiction Prize for Blue Night, which was number one on the Krimi ZEIT Best of Crime List for months. The critically acclaimed Beton Rouge, Mexico Street, Hotel Cartagena and River Clyde all followed in the Chastity Riley series. Hotel Cartagena won the CWA Crime in Translation Dagger in 2022. The Acapulco (2023) marked the beginning of the Chastity Reloaded series, with The Kitchen out in 2024. She lives in Sankt Pauli, Hamburg, with her husband and son.
Rachel Ward is a freelance translator of literary and creative texts from German and French to English. Having always been an avid reader and enjoyed word games and puzzles, she discovered a flair for languages at school and went on to study modern languages at the University of East Anglia. She spent the third year working as a language assistant at two grammar schools in Saaebrücken, Germany. During her final year, she realised that she wanted to put these skills and passions to use professionally and applied for UEA’s MA in Literary Translation, which she completed in 2002. Her published translations include Traitor by Gudrun Pausewang and Red Rage by Brigitte Blobel, and she is a Member of the Institute of Translation and Interpreting. Follow Rachel on Twitter @FwdTranslations, on her blog www.adiscounttickettoeverywhere.wordpress.com and on her website www.forwardtranslations.co.uk
Thanks to Anne Cater - @RandomTTours, Simone Buchholz @ohneKlippo and Orenda Books - @OrendaBooks for the opportunity to read and review.
Fiction: Crime Fiction / Translated Crime Fiction
Publisher: Orenda Books
ISBN: 978-1916788077
Pages: 276pp