Hamburg State Prosecutor Chastity Riley and her colleagues investigate the murders of men with a history of abuse towards women . . . as a startling, horrifying series of revelations emerge.
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.

When I listened to Simone Buchholz’s vibrant and original ‘Blue Night‘ back in 2021, I was disappointed to find that it was the only Chas Riley audiobook I could get in English even though the series was a bestseller in Germany. All that has changed now and most of the books are available in English and as audiobooks. I decided to celebrate by listening to the latest book in the series ‘The Kitchen’ (German title ‘Knastpralinen’) a book with dark themes and a distinctive, deeply engaging storytelling style.

On the surface, the main narrative of ‘The Kitchen‘ is how Chas Riley, an unconventional Public Prosecutor, navigates her life in the lively but slightly disreputable part of Hamburg that she’s given her heart to. The narrative is personal, intimate and engaging. Beneath the surface of the main narrative is an undertow of violent misogyny, fear, anger and a hunger for revenge. I found the subtle ways the undertow changed the main narrative fascinating.

As with ‘Blue Night‘ the focus of ‘The Kitchen‘ is on Chas Riley’s life as a whole, of which, prosecuting criminals is only a part. Her friendships, her relationships with her colleagues, how she sees her city and how she sees herself form the majority of the story. It’s clear that Chas Riley is someone who might more naturally be a denizen of the demimonde rather than a Public Prosecutor leading criminal investigations. She loves her city and enjoys the company of the not always entirely law-abiding people who live in her Sankt Pauli neighbourhood. The crimes in ‘The Kitchen’, how they are investigated and the impact they have on the people involved are tightly woven into the pattern of Chaz Riley’s life, colouring it and shaping it.

As a Brit, it took me a while to understand how the role of a German Public Prosecutor differs from the English Crown Prosecution Service (CPS). The CPS  provides legal advice to the police during a criminal investigations, decides whether a suspect should face criminal charges and conducts prosecutions. In Germany, the Public Prosecutor leads the preliminary criminal investigation, including instructing the police to conduct witness interviews or house searches, closing proceedings or writing indictments and then presents the final plea for the prosecution at the end of a court case. As I understand it, the role is less adversarial than the English version. It’s meant to be impartial, independent and focused on helping the victims of crime. Once I understood that, I could see that Chas Riley’s empathy for a diverse set of people combined with her need to discover the truth of what happened to a victim and hold people responsible make her a good fit for her job.

‘The Kitchen‘ deals with some dark themes. Initially, I thought the darkest part would be the killing and dismemberment of various men whose torsos are discovered by workers dredging the Elbe. I was wrong. The darkest part of the story is about the ubiquity of misogyny and violence against women. This is thread on which the rest of the story is hung. I admired how Simone Buchholz, kept the focus on the women and how they felt as she demonstrated the damage that male violence and the ever-present possiblity of male violence, has. This is done partly by intercutting the main narrative with descriptions of incidents from the life of an unnnamed woman, partly by have Chas Riley prosecute a human trafficking case as she leads the investigation into the torsos and partly by having something happen to someone close to Chas.

I loved that the mystery kept me guessing, that the details of Chas Riley’s life kept me engaged and that the outcome was both nuanced and suprising.

I’m keen to read the rest of the series now, starting with the audiobook version of ‘The Acapulco’.

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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 Krimi ZEIT 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.