Sharks by Simone Buchholz (translated by Rachel Ward)
I would like to thank Orenda books and Random Things tours for an advance copy of this novel in exchange for a fair and honest review
Publisher – Orenda Books
Published – 26/2
Price – £9.99 paperback £6.49 ebook
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.
NB this is the third boon in the Chastity Reloaded series
Crime novels are useful to give you a sense of place and one of the reasons I like to sample the translated ones if to get a sense of the issues and fixations of other countries. Some may ring bells with our own 21st century and some may not. In Simone Buchholz’s pacy thriller Sharks (very well translated by Rachel Ward) we have a procedural focused around an unusual German prosecutor whose colourful life is intermixed with a case revealing some hidden truths about he world she lives in.
Chasity Riley (Chas) is working with a police team on the brutal murders of an elderly couple. Someone was definitely trying to make a point with their deaths. At the same time Chas is having issues with her health, a cough that’s getting worse, a relationship on the edge and a best friend in a lot of trouble. This case looks a challenge.
I appreciated that although this is the third book in a series (which I’ve not previously read) the story doesn’t do too much of a recap, so the reader needs to put some clues together about where Chas and her fellow investigators have gotten to in their lives so far. Clearly somethings have happened regards a secret about a former colleague, but the details never actually explained. This is common in a long-running procedural as no one can be expected to remember so many adventures but usually early in such a series there is some room for reminders but this procedural for me worked unusually because it is very much focused on driving quickly from one scene to the next so I felt like I needed to get stuck into the fast flowing adventure in order to know how all these little hints would come together. Treating a reader like a grown up is always a fan for me and my regular dislike of clunky exposition.
Buchholz has Chas narrating her story in often very short chapters and for me Chas’ voice and personality is the glue holding the story together. Chas is for me quite fascinating and pleasingly opaque. I know she has an american father but lives in Germany but otherwise very little biography comes out in this tale. What does comes across is Chas lives life fully the way she wants it. There is a lot of smoking in this, and we soon see this isn’t good for her health and weirdly when she stops for a bit things get better. She likes to drink, watch ice hockey and is having a strange not quite relationship she isn’t a 100% convinced by although that her partner is a criminal (possibly reformed) is not the issue. Pleasingly unpredictable and yet unapologetic trying to work out what she does next was another reason to keep reading the story.
The case being solved here raises some interesting questions on power, corruption and gentrification. The murder is gruesome and very much feels like the working classes here are being toyed with by those with wealth and indeed there is a theme of the Hamburg that Chas lives in being in the throes of change itself which this case may be a factor in. The pace however is rather frenetic, and I’d had appreciated a bit more time to explore the issues raised than jump to a few final scenes and then a ending that feels on the one hand sudden but also encapsulated that those with power hold all the cards.
Sharks is an interesting loo at German crime and for that reason plus the delightfully fascinating Chas I think I can recommend it for fans of international crime novels, and I will be interested to see where this series goes next.
