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…
I'm thrilled to be hosting the blog tour for The Acapulco today. Huge thanks to Simone Buchholz. Orenda Books and Anne Cater from Random Things Tours for inviting me, and for my advance copy of the novel.'
I fell in love with Simone Buchholz's writing when I read Blue Night a few years ago and have eagerly looked forward to each new Chastity Riley book ever since. I've always felt a little regretful though that I couldn't read the earlier novels – Blue Night was the first to be translated into English but not actually the start of the series. Thankfully, Orenda Books have answered my silent plea and are going to be publishing these previous books. The Acapulco is the first book in the Chastity Reloaded series and as the introduction to Chastity Riley, it's the perfect place for new readers to start. However, those already familiar with the series shouldn't be concerned that they already know too much; there is inevitably some foreshadowing but this just makes everything that little more bittersweet, and there is still plenty to learn about Chas and her friends.
While Simone Buchholz's acerbically lyrical, gritty writing is always unmistakeable, each book is completely different from the last. This is the sort of risky, provocative fiction I love most and The Acapulco, while certainly a more traditional story than River Clyde, the last novel published into English, is still anything but a standard police procedural. Written mostly in the first person, present tense, Chastity's singular voice gives a real sense of immediacy but beyond that, it also allows readers to almost viscerally feel everything that she does. This might be a younger Chas but she still clearly bears the scars of her troubled past and it's fascinating to learn more about her upbringing and how she ended up working as a state prosecutor in Hamburg. It's not surprising to find that her relationships with her friends sustain her here, as much as in the future. It's particularly interesting to see how dependent she is on her boss, Fuller; he is not only her mentor at work, he's the father-figure she is desperate for and considering she often epitomises the hard-boiled detective at work, her vulnerability and need to reach out to him for comfort is rather touching.
The Acapulco is more a sharply perceptive character study than it is a murder mystery; how these gruesome deaths and the search for the killer affects Chas and her colleagues is what really drives the absorbing plot. However, Simone Buchholz ensures that the women who fall victim to a macabre serial killer who takes their scalps as morbid trophies are never merely faceless nobodies. Their deaths are shown to matter – to those who knew them and to this group of investigators who are perhaps at least as dysfunctional as those they seek justice for.
Meanwhile, Chastity's adopted home becomes almost another character in the book, the richly atmospheric, unvarnished portrayal of the city means The Acapulco also reads as a candidly honest love letter to Hamburg. The less salubrious, dirtier parts are shown to be at least as vital a part of the whole as the more affluent areas, as the hunt for the murderer becomes increasingly intense. Rachel Ward's translation effortlessly understands and captures the author's voice, losing none of the pacing, nor the drama, poignancy or wit.
The Acapulco is a compulsive, razor-edged thriller that crackles with energy and a stylish, often heartbreaking exploration of the darker sides of cities and the people who live in them. This is another outstanding novel from Simone Buchholz and one I cannot recommend highly enough, I loved it.
The Acapulco is published by Orenda Books, purchasing links can be found here.
Follow the blog tour, details are below.
About the Author
.jpeg)
About the Translator
Rachel Ward is a freelance translator of literary and creative texts from German and French to English. Having always been an avid reader and enjoyed word games and puzzles, she discovered a flair for languages at school and went on to study modern languages at the University of East Anglia. She spent the third year working as a language assistant at two grammar schools in Saaebrücken, Germany. During her final year, she realised that she wanted to put these skills and passions to use professionally and applied for UEA’s MA in Literary Translation, which she completed in 2002. Her published translations include Traitor by Gudrun Pausewang and Red Rage by Brigitte Blobel, and she is a member of the Institute of Translation and Interpreting.
Comments
Post a Comment