Today I’m joining the blog tour for Sharks. 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:

In Wilhelmsburg, Hamburg’s so-called ‘problem area’, an American couple is found brutally murdered in a derelict villa.

Prosecutor Chastity Riley is assigned the case, and quickly finds herself waist-deep in a murky tangle of city planners, shady investors and vanishing officials. The gentrification machine is rolling on, and someone is sending a very clear message.

As November fog settles over the city, Chastity is coughing up blood, her personal life is a slow-motion disaster, and her former colleague, Faller, won’t stop interfering. But nothing’s going to stop her from cutting through the lies – not even the sharks circling ever closer.

Dark, caustic and piercing, Sharks is a searing investigation into greed, power, and the price of resistance in a city devouring itself, from one of Germany’s finest, most original crime writers.

Review:

Simone Buchholz is an author I haven’t followed from the beginning of her career, but with every book of hers that I read, I wonder why not? I’ve loved this “reloaded” series and Sharks is no exception.

Chastity Riley is a brilliant character. She is very different to many of the detectives we see in crime fiction, but I relate to her very well. She’s determined and fierce, often sarcastic, and she supports a football team that always seems to lose! Her relationships with her colleagues and friends are also depicted really well, and this allows her loyalty to shine through.

Simone Buchholz is a talented writer and her descriptions paint a wonderful picture of Hamburg which brings it to life for me as a reader who has never visited there before. I must commend the translator, too, for ensuring Simone Buchholz’s fabulous way with words reaches the page.

Sharks is a fast paced novel with very short chapters which makes it really easy to read. The investigation itself is very compelling and I was always intrigued to find out the answers, which I didn’t guess until the very end.

Sharks is available from Amazon.

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