I love to discover my favorite cities through literary lenses. Given Germany´s strong local crime writing tradition I am very often rewarded to crime stories set in the many places I´ve left a piece of my heart.
Hamburg-based multi-awarded crime bestseller author Simone Buchholz bring her city of choice into the English-speaking realm. Beatles played here too, of course, but crime stories sound better for me.
Sharks, her latest translated into English by Rachel Ward, is published the 26th of February by Orenda Books, who published other Buchholz translations I had the opportunity to present on my blog. This is the third book featuring the public prosecutor Chastity Riley, but can be easily read as a stand alone (although the other two are heartly recommended). It is a relatively short book, but well written and with detailed information about those places in Hamburg that you need to be an insider to know them, particularly the bars and clubs in the Reeperbahn (´gloomy pubs, grey streets´).
Riley, who is dangerously ill, coughing blood, over exhausted and dealing with relationship crisis, is tasked with the investigation of the murder of an estranged ex-GI family - described as ´hard core conservatives´) living in a compound hunted by greedy real estate ´sharks´. Her very diverse team (´We´re all a pile of glorious bastards. And I like us´) is fast, they are completing each other very well, enjoying the exercise of having to solve the riddle.
Sharks is not necessarily a highly eventful novel, but well written and admirably translated, with a very clear plot. The characters of the book are by far the most interesting, including Riley whose inner dialogues doubling her conversations are very entertaining.
Clearly, the next time will be visiting Hamburg will see the city with completely different eyes. Sharks seems to have been cut a short sequency from the everyday life in the Wilhelmsburg borrough that ends at the author´s will. But we, the readers, may be curious to come back soon, hence the excitement of waiting for the next installment in the series.
Rating: 4 stars
Disclaimer: Book offered as part of the book tour but opinions are, as usual, my own
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