Beginning with Blue Night, Orenda Books has translated and published five books in the Chastity Riley series so far and now adds The Acapulco to the list.
However, The Acapulco isn’t the sixth novel in the series. It actually belongs to an earlier set of Chastity Riley stories that take place before she’s moved to witness protection in Blue Night. The first of those books was published in Germany as Revolverherz in 2008, but this has been rewritten and updated by Simone Buchholz, and translated by Rachel Ward as The Acapulco.
An unidentified woman wearing a blue wig is discovered dead in Hamburg’s harbour area. She was phenobarbital-drugged, strangled, and scalped. Chastity Riley, the district’s state prosecutor, has been assigned to work the case with the police. With no footprints due to rain and no DNA on the body the police have little to go on. It’s up to Chastity to establish the woman’s identity and find her killer. It’s a good thing she has a knack for getting inside the head of a murderer.
Kommissär Peter Hunkeler has been around since 1993 whenHansjörg Schneiderpenned the first in his crime series about a police detective from the city of Basel, Switzerland. Even though the German-speaking population has been familiar with the beer and food loving detective for almost thirty years, the rest of the world was denied this privilege. Until now.
The Basel Killings is the fifth book Scneider wrote in the Hunkeler series, but the first translated into English by Mike Mitchell. We meet Peter Hunkeler as an ageing detective close to retirement, somewhat jaded by life and struggling to keep up with inevitable changes in the structure of the police force.
Hunkeler is a simple man. He takes pleasure in good food, beer, the odd glass of red wine and spending time in the seedy haunts of Basel’s red-light district. Like a true classic detective he’s melancholic by nature, a state of mind quite possibly exacerbated by the absence of his long-term girlfriend, Hedwig. While Hedwig is on a three-month sabbatical in Paris, Hunkeler bides his time in Basel’s bars and strip-clubs, “plunging down into the world of the lost nightbirds.” This is where he finds the human contact and companionship he craves and finds what he considers the real Basel, not the distant and unemotional version. After forty years Hunkeler still doesn’t feel like he belongs in the city, not understanding the invisible boundaries drawn by the reserved Swiss.
“There were a surprising number of people out, grumpy-faced as always in November. People kept to them-selves, avoiding each other as best they could. It was always like that in Basel, Hunkeler had got used to it.”
One night late, after visiting one of his regular haunts Hunkeler sees Hardy, one of the locals, sitting on a bench in the street. Lamenting his relationship with Hedwig he barely notices that Hardy’s throat has been slit and his signature diamond stud violently cut from his ear. When Hunkeler starts digging into the victim’s background he finds that he wasn’t the harmless alcoholic with a disability pension who he he thought he was. Hardy, also known as Bernhard Schirmer, was a truck-driver for an Albanian drug trafficking syndicate and regularly transported illegal merchandise from Turkey to Switzerland across the Balkans. When Hunkeler establishes that Hardy might have kept some heroin for himself to resell, the logical assumption is that he was killed by an Albanian gang. Hunkeler is not convinced.
The unsolved murder of Barbara Amsler is still fresh in his mind. The prostitute was also strangled and her pearl stud cut from her ear. What follows is Hunkeler’s attempt at finding the link between these murders with the help of his colleagues at Basel City criminal investigations department: Detective Sergeant Madörin, Corporal Lüdi and Haller. However, when Ismail Binaku, the owner of the Albanian olive oil company Hardy might have worked for, escapes police custody by overpowering and knocking Hunkeler unconscious his fragile career also takes a beating and he is suspended from his duties.
To clear his head Hunkeler escapes to his rural home on a farm in Alsace where he can tend to the hens and watch the cows being milked by the farmer’s wife. Unfortunately the case won’t leave him in peace and while wandering in the woods he finds a car with a charred corpse in it. Considering that it’s just across the border of France Basel police has limited jurisdiction. Basel itself is also a central point where three countries converge, sharing borders with Italy and France, a geographical fact which leads to different police forces becoming involved and unnecessarily complicating cases.
When the corpse of a young man pulled from a pond with a stab wound to the heart the likelihood of a blood feud between Albanian families becomes more of a possibility. Shortly after a sixteen year-old Gypsy girl, Eva Căldăraru, barely escapes with her life when she too is strangled, her ear cut and almost drowned in a pond. The similarities with the Barbara Amsler case is undeniable and since Hunkeler knows the case best he’s reinstated as investigator.
The Basel Killings is in many aspects a throwback to the classic European detective novel. Hunkeler reminded me of the German TV detective Derrick in terms of atmosphere and setting. From the get-go we are made to understand that Basel is a city constantly engulfed in fog and it’s not difficult to visualise characters dramatically lurking around in it. Schneider excels at creating a moody atmosphere.
“Then he heard a tram approaching from the right, from the city centre. The soft sound of the wheels on the rails, metal on metal, a round light, the outline hardly discernible. A ghostly gleam gliding through the fog. Then the lighted windows of the number 3, a man with a hat on in the front car, a young couple in the rear. The girl’s light hair was draped over the boy’s shoulder. The tram disappeared in the fog, heading for the border.”
Hunkeler is similarly melancholic evoking sympathy from the reader, calling himself “… a state cripple, safeguarded against crises and destitution, secure in the Helvetian net of prosperous uprightness.” Yet, he seems to find contentment in the monotony of life and performing everyday tasks. He’s acutely aware of his mortality and anticipates the worst when he believes he’s develop a prostate problem, as well as a possible heart condition. These everyday worries makes him human, relatable and likeable.
However, The Basel Killing’s strength lies in Hunkeler’s shrewd observations of his surroundings and the characters who inhabit it. Whether it’s Nana from the Billiards Centre, little Cowboy and his dog, Luise in her leopard-skin jacket, pale Franz or Richard the foreign legionnaire, Hunkeler knows them all. Through his eyes we get to know them as well and we might even recognise these people who live on the fringes of society everywhere.
St Johann is a neighbourhood where 47% of the population are foreigners. As with many other recent crime fiction novels the way immigrants in European countries are treated and the prevailing prejudices are highlighted. Swiss are threatened by the presence of the “Gypsies” or Travellers, believing that they are criminals from the Balkans or Africa who are unfairly given health insurance, rent and schooling for their children – “… criminal riff-raffs …” Schneider shows the contrast between these immigrants and the wealthy Swiss, while also exposing the skeletons in Switzerland’s closet with regard to the unethical treatment of minority groups in the past.
“Switzerland hasn’t had problems with Travellers. It’s had problems with itself. Because it can’t stand its own foreignness.”
Whether you like a detective fiction story with traditional elements or crime fiction with strong social commentary, you’ll find both in The Basel Killings.
About the author
Hansjörg Schneider, born in Aarau, Switzerland, in 1938, worked as a teacher, and journalist. He is one of the most performed playwrights in the German language but is best known for his Inspector Hunkeler crime novels. Schneider has received numerous awards, among them the prestigious Friedrich Glauser Prize for The Basel Killings. He lives and writes in Basel.
About the translator
Mike Mitchell lives in Scotland and has published over eighty translations from German and French, including all the Friedrich Glauser Sergeant Studer novels and Gustav Meyrink’s five novels. His translation of Rosendorfer’s ‘Letters Back to Ancient China’ won the 1998 Schlegel-Tieck Translation Prize.
The Basel Killings is published by Bitter Lemon Press. Thank you to them and Random Things Tours for providing me with a review copy and inviting me to take part in the tour. See the dates below for more reviews over the next week.
Someone is setting cars on fire. These random incidents of pyromania initially occur in Germany, but quickly spread to the rest of world – Japan, the UK, Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Africa and outside the UN in New York. Whether it’s reality or an apt metaphor for our troubled world, why is it happening? One of these burning cars, a Fiat on Mexico street in Hamburg, has a man inside it – Nouri Saroukhan, the outcast son of a notorious crime family.
Buchholz, like her gutsy main character DI Riley, doesn’t mince her words. She gets to the point quickly and often abruptly with short chapters and even shorter sentences. And it works perfectly.
Without flowery descriptions and long-winded narratives Mexico Street delivers a story unlike any other I’ve read. It’s perfectly Noir-ish without being overly gloomy and wonderfully sharp-witted and comical at the most unexpected moments.
“Both car and Chief Inspector have seen better days. One has sagging eyelids and the other has sagging headlights.”
On numerous occasions I was so distracted by Chastity’s dry wit that I forgot about the actual crime – the murder of Nouri Saroukhan. Initially his cause of death trails back to his family, one who is involved in every possible criminal activity across Germany. A family where only the tribe matters, not the individual and women least of all. But is his death a result of a gang war or is there something more to the senseless death of a young man with a promising, crime-free career?
Assisting Chastity in the investigation is Ivo Stephanovic who has a soft spot for the tough-as-nails Chastity, but has no idea how to broach the subject. Her ex-lover, Bulent Inceman, who suffered the loss of his arm during an Albanian street attack and is described as a “Turkish Travolta” also shows up to compete for her attention.
Chastity’s first person narrative is alternated by that of a young Nouri, as well as Aliza Anteli, his illicit love-interest with a complicated and troubled backstory. Both of these additional voices add interesting layers to the story’s unfolding.
Initially Buchholz’s writing pushes you out of your comfort zone and shifts your expectations of a typical crime novel. Nonetheless, you will catch on quickly and fall into her rhythm with ease.
Despite not bothering with unnecessary long and redundant sentences, Buchhholz has a surreal and poetic style of writing. Mundane observations are turned into something metaphorical. Inanimate objects are personified and come to life in Chastity’s imagination and inner dialogue.
“… the question just bounces once over the desk, grazes the map and darts back at my throat where it immediately sinks in its teeth.”
Her style of describing characters and their environment also reminded me of a graphic novel like Sin City – dark and moody, with a wicked bite. These acute observations of Chastity’s world truly add something special and makes Mexico Street more than just a standard cookie-cutter crime novel.
“The city carries me further north, despite all the monsters, questioners, spitters, they’re all in my wake …”
If you love crime novels with a kick-ass female protagonist who has razor-sharp sense of humour, you’ll love Chastity Riley. The intriguing plot that forms the core of this off-beat crime novel is a welcome bonus. The good news is that Mexico Street is the third in Simone Buchholz’s Chastity Riley series, the first two being Blue Night and Beton Rouge and I, for one, will be collecting the whole set!
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, and second place in the German Crime Fiction Prize, for Blue Night, which was number one on the KrimiZEIT Best of Crime List for months. The next in the Chastity Riley series, Beton Rouge, won the Radio Bremen Crime Fiction Award and Best Economic Crime Novel 2017. She lives in Sankt Pauli, in the heart of Hamburg, with her husband and son.
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.
German-Polish interpreter, Eva Bruhns, is living an undisturbed life with her parents in Frankfurt during the 1960s. She’s about to be engaged to the heir of a wealthy family business and can finally escape the confines of her parent’s house, her brother and sister and the family restaurant, The German House. Shortly after her boyfriend, Jürgen, finally musters up the courage to ask Eva’s hand in marriage, she is hired to work at the Frankfurt trials and her future takes a startling turn.
What follows is a rendition of Eva’s realisation of the atrocities which took place less than twenty years ago during the Second World War. Together with the gruesome details of war crimes conducted by the Nazis, Eva also learns that her own parents have a connection to Auschwitz and she starts to question not only her fellow countrymen’s part in the genocide, but also the truth about her parents.
We’re introduced to the Bruhns family and their dedication to making a success of their restaurant through hard work. As Eva starts to ask questions about this hidden part of history, it becomes clear that her parents and sister will do anything to avoid answering her questions and are strongly against Eva’s involvement in the war criminal trials.
Eva’s family aren’t the only ones trying to keep her from uncovering the truth. Jürgen, her husband to be, highly disapproves of her working and would prefer a subservient housewife by his side, not a strong, independent woman. Considering she’s from a less affluent family with a restaurant on the poorer side of town also does not bode well for Eva’s prospects of marrying into a wealthy family.
Even though there has been quite an upsurge in fiction set in or related to the Second World War, particularly the role of Germany and the Nazis, The German House looks at this period in history from a fresh, more personal perspective. It shows that while history, in hindsight, might seem black and white, this isn’t necessarily the case and that when people and circumstances are taken into account, it’s much more complicated.The German House will provide you with a different perspective into a truly horrific part of our history.
The German House is published by Harper Collins and this review copy was kindly supplied by them via NetGalley.
On a foggy Saturday afternoon an armed man appears in the garden of the Niemann family in Freiburg, Germany and sets off a series of events which unexpectedly alter their lives.
The Dance of Death is the third in Oliver Bottini’s Black Forest Investigations series, and follows on from Zen and the Art of Murder, which we have reviewed. Although it can be described as a crime novel, the book goes deep into the issue of immigration and the plight of refugees.
WEST WORDS REVIEWS 