A serial killer is on the loose in Hamburg, targeting dancers from The Acapulco, a club in the city’s red-light district, removing their scalp as a gruesome trophy and replacing their hair 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, younger men and dingy light, 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, and it may be too late. For everyone…read

IN A NUTSHELL
Read this book if you’re looking for a character-driven crime novel with a distinctive voice, centred around a State Prosecutor who feels closer to the people of the redlight/bohemian part of Hamburg that she lives in than to her colleagues in the halls of justice. The strengths of this novel lie in building empathy for the victims, creating a strong sense of place and exploring personal relationships rather than in the plot.

The plot of ‘The Acapulco’ hangs on finding a serial killer who is preying on dancers in the Kiez in Hamburg. It’s very different from a typical FBI Behavioural Science Unit hunting for a serial killer story. Firstly, the main character, Chastity Riley, isn’t a police officer; she’s a State Prosecutor. The police officers report to her, and she shapes their enquiries. Secondly, the book is much more about Chastity than it is about the serial killer. Everything is told from her point of view, and her point of view is both unusual and fascinating. In personality, personal habits, and cultural preferences, she is much closer to the inhabitants of the St. Pauli demi-monde than to her fellow prosecutors. Much of the book is spent sharing her history and explaining her affection for the Keis and its inhabitants.

The plot worked well enough, but it was the portrait of Chastity that engaged my interest and my emotions. She and I have almost nothing in common. The things she loves to do, the people she likes to associate with, the places that she chooses to spend her time do not appeal to me. And yet, when I see them through her eyes, I can understand why she values them. Chastity drinks and smokes too much; she’s conflicted about her relationship with her we-shouldn’t-be-doing-this lover, and she is occasionally physically and emotionally overwhelmed by her work. Yet I found myself admiring her empathy, her compassion and her commitment to finding the killer. 

‘The Acapulco’ was my third visit with Chastity Riley in Hamburg. I started with Blue Night back in 2021 when it was the only Chastity Riley book available in English. When I learned, in 2024, that Rachel Ward had translated the rest of the series into English and that she and Simone Buchhold had won the CWA Crime Fiction In Translation Dagger in the process, I bought and read the most recently published audiobook, ‘The Kitchen’ (2024). ‘The Acapulco’ was the book before ‘The Kitchen’, but reading them out of order didn’t cause me any problems. I now have the latest book, ‘Sharks’(2026) waiting in my TBR pile. 

The books are narrated by Imogen Church, who I think does a great job of making Chasity Riley accessible. Click on the YouTube link below to hear a sample.

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