Today I’m joining the blog tour for The Kitchen. My review is written with thanks to Anne Cater for inviting me on the tour and to Orenda Books for my copy of the book.

Blurb:

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:

It’s great to be back with Chastity Riley again, and as in The Acapulco, the first person narration really allows her voice to shine through. The Kitchen deals with some horrific crimes and her voice often provides the touch of humour that is required in such terrible situations. In The Kitchen, we do get to.meet more of her friends and it’s interesting to see how she interacts with them in different situations. I definitely feel like I know her better having read the latest instalment.

Simone Buchholz is a wonderful writer and her descriptions of Hamburg took me straight to the places about which she is writing. I love that Rachel Ward’s translation really brings out the author’s meaning and allow us to enjoy the story with all of its different layers.

I love novels where the reader is able to read from the killer’s perspective and this works really effectively in The Kitchen as we begin to see what their motives might be. I did guess who the killer was before the big reveal, but this didn’t spoil my enjoyment of a brilliantly plotted story.

I have a rather large backlog on the rest of the series and I can’t wait to get started on them.

The Kitchen is available from Amazon.

You can follow the rest of the blog tour here: