Enjoy! 
The Blurb
State Prosecutor Chastity Riley faces her most challenging case yet, with a violent serial killer at large, who might just be uncatchable…
A serial killer is on the loose in Hamburg, targeting dancers from The Acapulco, a club in the city’s red-light district, taking their scalps as gruesome trophies and replacing them with plastic wigs.
Chastity Riley is the state prosecutor responsible for crimes in the district, and she’s working alongside the police as they investigate. Can she get inside the mind of the killer?
Her strength is thinking like a criminal; her weaknesses are pubs, bars and destructive relationships, but as Chastity searches for love and a flamboyant killer – battling her demons and the dark, foggy Hamburg weather – she hits dead end after dead end.
As panic sets in and the death toll rises, it becomes increasingly clear that it may already be too late. For everyone…
Extract
SHOWTIME
'As a child, if my dad sent me down into the cellar, I used to sing quietly to myself. Just quiet enough that I could still have heard if some faceless hunchback had loomed up on my left, but loud enough to delude the monsters. Now, as I walk towards forensics, I’d quite like to sing.
Faller’s behind me on the stairs.
‘Showtime!’
‘Ghost train,’ I say, waiting a moment until we’re in step.
‘How are you?’ he asks, looking appraisingly at me. He’s worrying again.
‘I’m tired,’ I say. ‘And not in the mood for a second encounter with a mutilated woman.’
‘Yes,’ he says, ‘somehow they seem even more threatening on the slab.’
‘When you’ve seen them the second time, it’s much harder to forget what they look like. Have you spoken to the two Filipino sailors?’
‘Yes,’ says Faller. ‘They’re acting like they’re too shocked to speak. But I don’t think they can know anything of interest to us. They don’t seem the calibre we’re looking for. Besides which, their ship sails again this evening and there’s no real reason to keep them here.’
Faller as ever. I think he’s right and I trust his judgement. The old man will know how to assess the situation.
‘And what do the SOCO guys have to say?’
‘A fair bit,’ says Faller. ‘The upshot of which is that we don’t have a single usable line on the perpetrator, not even a footprint. Rained cats and dogs again last night. The bloke was in luck with the weather.’
‘What makes you so sure our murderer’s a man?’ I ask.
‘Throttling someone,’ he says, ‘is not exactly a woman’s thing, is it?’
We walk side by side down the last few steps, and the further down we get, the smoother and more sterile everything gets, the grey stairs and walls look so slippery that once you’re down, you might as well forget ever making it back up.
‘Everything OK?’ Faller asks.
‘Yes,’ I say, ‘everything’s OK.’
Ahead of us there’s the steel door to pathology, behind that is the plastic curtain, and behind that is what remains of a crime. I’d like to link arms with him but don’t have the nerve.
Open door, curtain aside, dance of the dead.
The pathologist is washing his hands. By and by, I join in, and the moment I’ve finished here, I’ll wash my nose out too. The disinfectant smell of these clinical catacombs makes me all jittery. Sweet and lemony, spilt Sicilian liqueur plus Domestos. And once you’ve smelled it, you can’t get it out of your nose all day. Whatever I want to eat or drink later, it’ll taste of post-mortem. Most days after a visit to the university hospital cellars, I just don’t ingest anything else.
The room is fully tiled, and bathed in a greenish shimmer. The girl is lying under a neon light on the horrible, high dissecting table. Her skin is very white, almost transparent. Running around her neck is the imprint of her deadly encounter with a strangulation device, and a fraction further down, running parallel and at right angles to it, are two finely stitched, pale-reddish lines. One runs along her collar bones, one down from the little hollow beneath her voice box to her pubic bone. Opened, closed. The bright-blue wig is on a shelf between the wash basin and the table, packed up in a freezer bag. Her face is young, pretty, and almost a touch cheeky. I’d put her at mid-twenties, tops. Her skull is just one big disaster zone. I can barely look.
‘Go ahead, doc,’ says Faller.
This is our division of labour: in pathology, he basically does the talking while I try not to keel over.'
The Author
.jpeg)
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, with The Acapulco the latest in the series. She lives in Sankt Pauli, in the heart of Hamburg, with her husband and son.
State Prosecutor Chastity Riley faces her most challenging case yet, with a violent serial killer at large, who might just be uncatchable…
A serial killer is on the loose in Hamburg, targeting dancers from The Acapulco, a club in the city’s red-light district, taking their scalps as gruesome trophies and replacing them with plastic wigs.
Chastity Riley is the state prosecutor responsible for crimes in the district, and she’s working alongside the police as they investigate. Can she get inside the mind of the killer?
Her strength is thinking like a criminal; her weaknesses are pubs, bars and destructive relationships, but as Chastity searches for love and a flamboyant killer – battling her demons and the dark, foggy Hamburg weather – she hits dead end after dead end.
As panic sets in and the death toll rises, it becomes increasingly clear that it may already be too late. For everyone…
The Acapulco was published on 13th April 2023 by Orenda Books.
SHOWTIME
'As a child, if my dad sent me down into the cellar, I used to sing quietly to myself. Just quiet enough that I could still have heard if some faceless hunchback had loomed up on my left, but loud enough to delude the monsters. Now, as I walk towards forensics, I’d quite like to sing.
Faller’s behind me on the stairs.
‘Showtime!’
‘Ghost train,’ I say, waiting a moment until we’re in step.
‘How are you?’ he asks, looking appraisingly at me. He’s worrying again.
‘I’m tired,’ I say. ‘And not in the mood for a second encounter with a mutilated woman.’
‘Yes,’ he says, ‘somehow they seem even more threatening on the slab.’
‘When you’ve seen them the second time, it’s much harder to forget what they look like. Have you spoken to the two Filipino sailors?’
‘Yes,’ says Faller. ‘They’re acting like they’re too shocked to speak. But I don’t think they can know anything of interest to us. They don’t seem the calibre we’re looking for. Besides which, their ship sails again this evening and there’s no real reason to keep them here.’
Faller as ever. I think he’s right and I trust his judgement. The old man will know how to assess the situation.
‘And what do the SOCO guys have to say?’
‘A fair bit,’ says Faller. ‘The upshot of which is that we don’t have a single usable line on the perpetrator, not even a footprint. Rained cats and dogs again last night. The bloke was in luck with the weather.’
‘What makes you so sure our murderer’s a man?’ I ask.
‘Throttling someone,’ he says, ‘is not exactly a woman’s thing, is it?’
We walk side by side down the last few steps, and the further down we get, the smoother and more sterile everything gets, the grey stairs and walls look so slippery that once you’re down, you might as well forget ever making it back up.
‘Everything OK?’ Faller asks.
‘Yes,’ I say, ‘everything’s OK.’
Ahead of us there’s the steel door to pathology, behind that is the plastic curtain, and behind that is what remains of a crime. I’d like to link arms with him but don’t have the nerve.
Open door, curtain aside, dance of the dead.
The pathologist is washing his hands. By and by, I join in, and the moment I’ve finished here, I’ll wash my nose out too. The disinfectant smell of these clinical catacombs makes me all jittery. Sweet and lemony, spilt Sicilian liqueur plus Domestos. And once you’ve smelled it, you can’t get it out of your nose all day. Whatever I want to eat or drink later, it’ll taste of post-mortem. Most days after a visit to the university hospital cellars, I just don’t ingest anything else.
The room is fully tiled, and bathed in a greenish shimmer. The girl is lying under a neon light on the horrible, high dissecting table. Her skin is very white, almost transparent. Running around her neck is the imprint of her deadly encounter with a strangulation device, and a fraction further down, running parallel and at right angles to it, are two finely stitched, pale-reddish lines. One runs along her collar bones, one down from the little hollow beneath her voice box to her pubic bone. Opened, closed. The bright-blue wig is on a shelf between the wash basin and the table, packed up in a freezer bag. Her face is young, pretty, and almost a touch cheeky. I’d put her at mid-twenties, tops. Her skull is just one big disaster zone. I can barely look.
‘Go ahead, doc,’ says Faller.
This is our division of labour: in pathology, he basically does the talking while I try not to keel over.'
The Author
.jpeg)
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, with The Acapulco the latest in the series. She lives in Sankt Pauli, in the heart of Hamburg, with her husband and son.
No comments:
Post a Comment