Blog Tour: The Kitchen – Simone Buchholz, translated by Rachel Ward

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 offender, Chastity takes matters into her own hands and as a
link between the two cases emerges, horrifying revelations threaten Chastity’s
own moral compass … and put everything at risk.

The award-winning, critically acclaimed Chastity Riley series returns with a slick,
hard-boiled, darkly funny thriller that tackles issues of violence and the
difference between law and justice with devastating insight, and an ending you
will never see coming…

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. The critically acclaimed Beton Rouge, Mexico Street, Hotel Cartagena and River Clyde all followed in the Chastity Riley series. Hotel Cartagena won the CWA Crime in Translation Dagger in 2022. The
Acapulco (2023) marked the beginning of the Chastity Reloaded series, with The
Kitchen out in 2024.

She lives in Sankt Pauli, in the heart of Hamburg, with her husband and son.

My thoughts: Chastity is prepping a case for court when she gets a call about body parts being found all neatly packaged up, just the hands, feet and head. It’s weird and when a second package is found, the team think they might be looking for a serial killer.

At the same time Carla, Chastity’s best friend, is the victim of a horrific assault which leaves her reeling, and Chastity at a loss as to how to help, the police aren’t getting far with their investigation and Carla doesn’t want to talk about it.

So Chastity focuses on the case, trying to find the link between the victims, and perhaps lead to the killer. After meeting a new friend of Carla and spending an evening at a fancy restaurant, she’s putting the dots together, in a really quite gross solution that’s pretty shocking too.

Chastity is still pretty bad at the personal life stuff, keeping people at arms length, even when she knows deep down that she needs them. I still really like her, even though she is deeply dysfunctional and a bit messed up.

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.