#BlogTour Hotel Cartagena by Simone Buchholz

 

Such a pleasure to welcome Chastity Riley back to the blog - it's Hotel Cartagena by Simone Buchholz, translated by Rachel Ward.

About the Author

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 KrimiZEIT Best of Crime List for months. She lives in Sankt Pauli, in the heart of Hamburg, with her husband and son.

Follow @ohneKlippo on Twitter, on Goodreads, Visit simonebuchholz.com, Buy Hotel Cartagena

About the book

Twenty floors above the shimmering lights of the Hamburg docks, Public Prosecutor Chastity Riley is celebrating a birthday with friends in a hotel bar when twelve heavily armed men pull out guns, and take everyone hostage. Among the hostages is Konrad Hoogsmart, the hotel owner, who is being targeted by a young man whose life – and family – have been destroyed by Hoogsmart’s actions.

With the police looking on from outside – their colleagues’ lives at stake – and Chastity on the inside, increasingly ill from an unexpected case of sepsis, the stage is set for a dramatic confrontation … and a devastating outcome for the team … all live streamed in a terrifying bid for revenge.

Crackling with energy and populated by a cast of unforgettable characters, Hotel Cartagena is a searing, stunning thriller that will leave you breathless.

Review

This is the fourth book in the Chastity Riley series, all of which can be read as standalone novels. This is definitely a series I would recommend for readers looking for something that doesn't adhere to the normal rules of crime fiction.

This is a short read, but one with a bite. It's dark and gritty. Chastity finds herself in a hostage situation with her colleagues, by a man with a vendetta. He wants revenge. The target just happens to be in the same place as a birthday party she is attending - of course he is, it's just her luck.

Kudos to the author for the nice homage to Alan Rickman and Die Hard, I must admit the dedication made me smile. then again I wouldn't expect anything less from Buchholz.

It's a gritty urban crime series, a character driven story that inhabits its own world. The surroundings and idiosyncrasies of the country and the people are what make the story in combination with the very specific snark the author brings to the table.

Based on the end of this book the world as Chastity knows it is changed forever and we will have to see what that will entail going forward. I'm sure it won't make her any less cynical, set in her ways or unable to make certain choices.

Buy Hotel Cartagena at Amazon Uk or go to Goodreads for any other retailer. Publisher : Orenda Books pub date 4 Jan. 2021. Buy at Amazon com.

#BlogTour Mexico Street by Simone Buchholz

It's a pleasure to take part in the BlogTour Mexico Street by Simone Buchholz, translated by Rachel Ward.

About the Author
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 KrimiZEIT Best of Crime List for months. She lives in Sankt Pauli, in the heart of Hamburg, with her husband and son.

Follow @ohneKlippo @OrendaBooks on Twitter, on Goodreads,Visit simonebuchholz.com, Buy Mexico Street

About the book
Hamburg state prosecutor Chastity Riley investigates a series of arson attacks on cars across the city, which leads her to a startling and life-threatening discovery involving criminal gangs and a very illicit love story…

Night after night, cars are set alight across the German city of Hamburg, with no obvious pattern, no explanation and no suspect. Until, one night, on Mexico Street, a ghetto of high-rise blocks in the north of the city, a Fiat is torched. Only this car isn’t empty.

The body of Nouri Saroukhan – prodigal son of the Bremen clan – is soon discovered, and the case becomes a homicide. Public prosecutor Chastity Riley is handed the investigation, which takes her deep into a criminal underground that snakes beneath the whole of Germany. And as details of Nouri’s background, including an illicit relationship with the mysterious Aliza, emerge, it becomes clear that these are not random attacks, and there are more on the cards…

Review
I can't heap enough praise on the author for the intricate well-researched plot. She has outdone herself when it comes to explaining the complexity of the immigrants and the gang culture that exists in Germany. How the cultural differences come to a grinding halt in regards to Western culture. There is no comparison, but more importantly where one side is open to change and cultural assimilation - the other is not.

The lack of respect or acknowledgement for the rule of law plays the biggest role in this story, because the Bremen clan has their own antiquated system, which is mired in ancestral myth and deeply embedded in the male dominated society. Violence begets violence. Women are belongings. You break the rules and you're out. Nouri Saroukhan isn't just out, he is dead, and his family doesn't give two monkeys.

It's up to Chastity, who is still as tough as old boot nails by the way and only ever one Schnapps and a beer away from not quite fit for duty, and her colleagues to find out why someone wanted Nouri dead.

Buchholz writes a vicious urban crime thriller, and just in case there is any misunderstanding by vicious I mean excellent. She really knows how to write about the grit, decay, corruption and captures the Beton-Dschungel element of city life. The way the cement has encroached upon life and the living. The authenticity and realism in the plot always overshadows the fiction, which is very much trademark Buchholz style, as is the snarky self-deprecating humour.

As always it is a cracking read.

Buy Mexico Street at Amazon Uk or go to Goodreads for any other retailer.Publisher: Orenda Books; Pub date 5 March 2020 | Paperback Original | £8.99. Buy at Amazon com.

Read my review of Blue Night and Beton Rouge by Simone Buchholz.

#BlogTour Beton Rouge by Simone Buchholz

Today it's my turn on the BlogTour Beton Rouge by Simone Buchholz. (Translated by Rachel Ward) It's criminal noir with characters who are bigger than the plot, which makes them the story. This is the second book in the Chastity Riley series and hopefully not the last.

About the Author
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, and second place in the German Crime Fiction Prize, for Blue Night, which was number one on the KrimiZEIT Best of Crime List for months. She lives in Sankt Pauli, in the heart of Hamburg, with her husband and son.

Follow @ohneKlippo @OrendaBooks on Twitter,Visit simonebuchholz.com, Buy Beton Rouge

About the book
The second book in the critically acclaimed Chastity Riley series.

On a warm September morning, a man is found unconscious and tortured in a cage at the entrance to the offices of one of Germany’s biggest magazines. He’s soon identified as a manager of the company. Three days later, another manager appears in a similar way.

The magazine staff were facing significant layoffs, so sympathy for the two men is in short supply. Chastity Riley and her new colleague Ivo Stepanovic are tasked with uncovering the truth behind the attacks, an investigation that goes far beyond the revenge they first suspect, to the dubious past shared by both victims. Travelling to the south of Germany, they step into the hothouse world of boarding schools, where secrets are currency, and monsters are bred…monsters who will stop at nothing to protect themselves.

Review
I think what I enjoy most about the particular style Buchholz brings to the table, is the 'I don't care what is going on around me - my grasp on reality and life in general is more important' attitude of the main character. This is what gives the Chastity Riley series a distinctive noir touch, and of course the more brusque character interaction and dialogue.

She always seems, and interestingly enough she says it herself, completely distanced from everything and everyone, including the cases she works on. Imagine the universe of Chastity and all the other characters are fellow planets circling the sun.

When she is roped into an unusual case involving a man being found naked in a small cage in a public area, she is also introduced to the person in charge of the case, Stepanovic. The meeting of the two is one of the most fascinating elements of this book.

A shout-out to the author for Stepanovic and the anti-Delorean theory. Now I finally understand the no man's land of the mind and consciousness. Combining his baggage and thought process with that of Chastity's very own brand of dealing with life and her relationships was a stroke of genius.

The two of them try to understand the mind-set of a perpetrator, who wants to scare and humiliate their victim, and at the same time figure out why nobody has any empathy for the victim.

The phrase Schmidt's Cat is used quite a few times in the book. Schmidt's Cat (Schmidt's Katze) is a phrase used in more recent eras to describe something or someone moving at an incredibly fast speed. Historically - Schmidt derives from the German word Schmied (blacksmith). The blacksmiths would often own a cat that was used to chase the mice away, and the cat would scarper as fast it could when the blacksmith banged his hammer, hence as fast as Schmidt's Cat.

So as it relates to the boy in the story becomes Sebastian Schmidt's cat. A well thought out sardonic twist that gets lost in translation somewhat. So, once again with the idiomatic expressions.

I have a feeling that Buchholz is just getting started, and not just where the Chastity Riley series is concerned. She has a fresh, brash voice and isn't afraid to use it. It's criminal noir with characters who are bigger than the plot, which makes them the story. Definitely an author to watch out for.

Buy Beton Rouge at Amazon Uk or go to Goodreads for any other retailer. Publisher: Orenda Books; Paperback pub date 21 Feb 2019, Kindle pub date 28 Dec 2018

Read my review of Blue Night (Chastity Riley #1) by Simone Buchholz

#BlogTour Blue Night by Simone Buchholz

I have been looking forward to introducing you to this unusual gem of a book. It puts the darkness in the word Noir with its sharp-tongued dialogues and very confrontational style. There are no candy floss scenarios lurking in these pages. Welcome to the BlogTour for Blue Night by Simone Buchholz. 

About the Author
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 for the German Crime Fiction Prize for Blue Night, which was number one on the KrimiZEIT Best of Crime List for months. She lives in Sankt Pauli, in the heart of Hamburg, with her
husband and son.
Follow  @ohneKlippo (Simone Buchholz) @Orendabooks  or @FwdTranslations (Rachel Ward, Translator)
Visit simonebuchholz.com
Buy Blue Night

About the book
After convicting a superior for corruption and shooting off a gangster’s crown jewels, the career of Hamburg’s most hard-bitten state prosecutor, Chastity Riley, has taken a nose dive: she has been transferred to the tedium of witness protection to prevent her making any more trouble. However, when she is assigned to the case of an anonymous man lying under police guard in hospital, Chastity’s instinct for the big, exciting case kicks in. Using all her powers of persuasion, she soon gains her charge’s confidence, and finds herself on the trail to Leipzig, a new ally, and a whole heap of lethal synthetic drugs. When she discovers that a friend and former colleague is trying to bring down Hamburg’s Albanian mafia kingpin single-handedly, it looks like Chas Riley’s dull life on witness protection really has been short-lived…
(Translated by Rachel Ward)

Review
Chastity Riley  is to the 21st century what  Horst Schimanski was to the 80's, the only difference being gender and that Riley doesn't have a sidekick, but she does surround herself with the outsiders and rebels of society. Her own group of friends, colleagues and handy contacts. Not exactly upstanding citizens, but very much people who are interested in justice. Well, let's say their own kind of justice.

Riley finds herself isolated at work, restricted and demoted after making a series of serious mistakes in her role as a high ranking state prosecutor. She is assigned the case of a John Doe, who was beaten viciously and left to die. She has her own way of gaining his confidence and making him talk by building a rapport via food and beer. Meanwhile he seems to be ten steps ahead of her and willing to reveal information, which in turn points her in the direction of a major criminal operation.

This is Noir with an interesting staccato like pace and style added to give it a more brash, realistic and curt feeling. Buchholz doesn't have any words to spare. Her dialogue is abrupt, sharp and to the point. Often giving the appearance of an afterthought or emotional revelation rather than the bittersweet moment of honesty it actually represents.

Interspersed between the dialogues and functioning as a chapter divider of sorts are comments or statements made by the main characters in the book. As if some random reporter were asking them for a running commentary every now and again on the situation at hand or on the particular time-frame and year the characters are in. The comments are given purely from each character's own perspective, which gives the whole story an element of critical audience watching from the peanut gallery. It is an innovative approach and adds to the general Noirish feeling of the book.

I was raised in Germany, and speak the language at native level, so I can say with absolute certainty that certain idioms and common phrases get lost in translation. It is a common element of translation, but is more evident in certain languages and has nothing to do with the translation or expertise of the translator. So, with that being said I can't wait to read this again in the original language.

Buchholz has a refreshingly new provocative voice, and I have no doubt she will stand out amongst a sea of writers. She has a take no prisoners attitude when it comes to the validity and eccentricity of her characters, and her plot. Blue Night is to books what a shot of whiskey of is to the world of liquor. It takes your breath away and then it burns until a warmth settles into the pit of your stomach. That's the kind of mark and statement Buchholz is making.

Buy Blue Night at Amazon Uk or go to Goodreads for any other retailer.