fullybooked2017

As her name suggests, Hamburg State Prosecutor Chastity Riley has American antecedents, but her work and life are both firmly centred in the German city that sits astride the River Elbe. Author Simone Buchholz leaves us pretty much to our own devices to imagine what she looks like, but we know she smokes, enjoys a drink or three, can be foul-mouthed, and has an on-off relationship with a chap called Klatsche.

From the word go, Buchholz drops a broad hint about what is going on, but Riley only finds out much later. Her immediate problem is that two packages of body parts have been recovered from the Elbe, disturbed by dredging. The men have – literally – been expertly butchered and the parts neatly wrapped up in plastic and duct tape. It turns out that the dead men have a history of serious abuse towards women, and a witness report suggests that two women are linked to the killings.

A third body is found, this one being intact, but Riley has another problem to solve. She has a friend named Carla, who runs a coffee shop and is a very important part of Riley’s life, fulfilling the dual function of sister and mother. When Carla is attacked and raped by two men, Riley becomes angry with the police’s apparent lack of urgency, but is powerless to intervene. As well as trying to solve the mystery of the Elbe packages she is central in a current court case where two people traffickers are on trial. Their business model was to travel to rural areas in places like Romania, and persuade young women that a glamorous lifestyle awaits them in Germany. The reverse is true, of course, and the girls are soon put to work in Hamburg’s notorious sex trade.

Events in Riley’s personal and professional life seek to be spinning out of control. First, thanks to the defence lawyers in the trafficking case successfully making out that their clients are really nice chaps who had traumatic childhoods, and who’ve just had a bit of bad luck recently, the smirking criminals get the lightest sentence possible. Then, she and Klatsche discover that Carla – with the assistance of a shady friend called Rocco – have done what the police failed to do, and have captured the two rapists. It is only with the greatest reluctance that Riley realises she must persuade Carla to hand the two men over to the police.

When, with a mixture of instinct and sheer luck, Riley identifies the two women responsible for the three earlier murders, her professional integrity is put to its sternest test. In some ways this is a very angry book and is centred on the evil that men do, particularly to women. It is obviously entirely appropriate to the tone of the book that much of it is set in the St Pauli district of Hamburg, an area that began its notoriety centuries ago as a place that provided entertainment for sailors. Its infamous Reeperbahn remains a living – and sadly prosperous – example of women being made into a commodity to please men. Despite her obvious anger, however, Buchholz (left) doesn’t moralise. Chastity Riley realises that Hamburg is what it is, and  if the needle of her moral compass occasionally swings in an unexpected direction, then so be it.

The Kitchen proves that a book doesn’t have to be 400 pages long to be effective. The prose is precise, spare, icy cool and as dark as ink. Simone Buchholz has serious style – in spades. The book was translated by Rachel Ward, published by  Orenda Books and is available now.