Reading across the world – April: Germany – The Kitchen by Simone Buchholz; Denmark – Back From The Dead by Heidi Amsinck; Sark – The Stranger’s Companion by Mary Horlock #Germany #Denmark #Sark

After last month’s two visits to South America, my April reviews will be much nearer to home, all three being in Europe. Two are novels in series that I already am familiar with and the other is an unusual novel set in the Channel Islands.

The first stop is Hamburg in Germany for The Kitchen by Simone Buchholz, which I will be reviewing as part of the Random Things blog tour (on 15 April). This is book seven in the Chasity Riley series. If you are not familiar with the series then you are in for a treat. Chastity is a State Prosecutor but is more like a hard-boiled PI at times, with a tough kick-ass streak, whilst remaining some vulnerabilities and poor taste in men. The prose is fantastic, almost lyrical at times but totally stripped back as if every single word has been carefully considered.

Previous reviews in this series Blue Night, Hotel Cartegena, River Clyde and The Acapulco.

The Kitchen by Simone Buccholz

Published by Orenda Books on 11 April 2024

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.

The award-winning, critically acclaimed Chastity Riley series returns with a slick, hard-boiled, darkly funny thriller that tackles issues of violence and the
difference between law and justice with devastating insight, and an ending you
will never see coming…

Then on 25 April 2024 it is on to Copenhagen in Denmark for Back From The Dead by Heidi Amsinck which again is for the Random Things blog tour. This is book three in the Jensen series, which is another one of my personal favourites. Jensen is a freelance journalist who has returned to Copenhagen after a period in London. Can she find enough of a reason to make her stay? Her former lover DI Henrik Jungersen has split from his wife to add further complexity to Jensen’s life.

Previous reviews in this series The Call me Jensen and The Girl in the Photo.

Back from the Dead by Heidi Amsinck

Published by Muswell Press 18 April 2024

A Missing person … a headless corpse … Jensen is on the case.

June, and as Copenhagen swelters under record temperatures, a headless corpse surfaces in the murky harbour, landing a new case on the desk of DI Henrik Jungersen, just as his holiday is about to start.

Elsewhere in the city, Syrian refugee Aziz Almasi, driver to Esben Nørregaard MP has vanished. Fearing a link to shady contacts from his past, Nørregaard appeals to crime reporter Jensen to investigate.

Could the body in the harbour be Aziz? Jensen turns to former lover Henrik for help. As events spiral dangerously out of control, they are thrown together once more in the pursuit of evil, in a case more twisted and, more dangerous than they could ever have imagined.

Inbetween these two blog tours I will be posting my review of a novel set on the island of Sark in the Channel Islands which is set in 1933.

The Stranger’s Companion by Mary Horlock

Published by Baskerville on 20 June 2024

October 1933

With a population of five hundred souls, isolated Sark has a reputation for being ‘the island where nothing ever happens’. Until, one day, the neatly folded clothes of an unknown man and woman are discovered abandoned at a coastal beauty spot. As the search for the missing couple catches the attention of first the local and then national newspapers, Sark finds itself front-page news.

When young islander Phyllis Carey returns to Sark from England she throws herself into solving the mystery. As Phyll digs through swirls of gossip, ghost stories and dark rumours in search of the truth, she crosses paths with Everard Hyde, a surprise visitor from her past. As press coverage builds to fever pitch, long-suppressed secrets from Phyll’s and Everard’s shared, shadowy history begin to surface.

The Stranger’s Companion is a beguiling historical mystery inspired by a real-life crime, which remains unsolved to this day.

Reading across the world March: Bolivia – The Salt Cutter by C.J.Howell; Argentina – Rodolfo Walsh’s Last Case by Elsa Drucaroff #Bolivia #Argentina

On this blog I have been open to fiction from afar. Now I am now making a concerted to read novels from (or set in) as many countries across the globe as I am able to. I have started the task of recording all the locations already ‘visited’ on my reviews on a new page and hopefully, in a week or two, that task will be complete.

So onto my future stop offs. First up is Bolivia and a review of The Salt Cutter as part of the Random Things blog tour, when it is my turn tomorrow (11 March). The blurb of the novel is posted below as a taster of what to expect.

The Salt Cutter by C.J. Howell

Published by Black Spring Crime on 17 January 2024

Bolivia. 1990. A soldier arrives in the small town of Uyuni. A place where people endure rather than enjoy. People don’t live there, they survive there.

The soldier knows they’re coming for him. Hunting him down so they can deal their own brand of justice.

He needs to get out. To make it to the border and escape what is waiting for him.

He’s prepared to do anything to survive.

Even kill.

This is noir fiction at its finest. With characters that you will root for, heartbreak and breathtaking writing, this is a story that will linger in reader’s minds long after you’ve turned the final page.

Then with only a sort break of a couple of days it will be across the South American continent to Argentina for Rodolfo Walsh’s Last Case. I will be reviewing this novel on Monday (11 March) on a blog tour organised by the publisher. Again the blurb is reproduced below as a taster of what to expect. This will be the second visit in 2024 as in February I reviewed Death Flight by Sarah Sultoon, and both stories centre on those disappeared or murdered by the military Junta.

Rodolfo Walsh’s Last Case by Elsa Drucaroff translated by Slava Faybysh

Published by Corylus Books on 5 March 2024

A key figure in the politics and literature of Argentina, Rodolfo Walsh wrote his iconic Letter to my Friends in December 1976, recounting the murder of his daughter Victoria by the military dictatorship. Just a few months later, he was killed in a shoot-out – just one of the Junta’s many thousands of victims.

What if this complex figure – a father, militant, and writer who delved the regime’s political crimes – had also sought to reveal the truth of his own daughter’s death?

Elsa Drucaroff’s imagining of Rodolfo Walsh undertaking the most personal investigation of his life is an electrifying, suspense-filled drama in which love and life decisions are inseparable from political convictions as he investigates the mystery of what happened to his own daughter.

The head of intelligence for Montoneros, a clandestine Peronist organisation co-ordinating armed resistance against the dictatorship, Rodolfo Walsh was also a prolific writer and journalist, seen as the forerunner of the true crime genre with his 1957 book Operation Massacre. What if beneath the surface of his Letter to my Friends lay a gripping story lost to history?

I already have a number of novels in far flung locations lined up to review, but would welcome input and suggestions from other readers of countries to ‘explore’.

Point Zero – Coming 15 February 2024 #Seicho Matsumoto #PointZero

By Seicho Matsumoto

Translated by Louise Heal Kawai @quietmoonwave17

Published by Bitter Lemon Press https://www.bitterlemonpress.com/ @bitterlemonpub

288 pages 9781913394936

Publication date 15 February 2024

Available to pre-order now from Amazon here

I was sent an electronic copy in exchange for a fair review. I would like to thank the Publisher for arranging this.

What the critics say

“A master crime writer…Seicho Matsumoto’s thrillers dissect Japanese society.”

The New York Times Book Review

“There’s an element of the exquisite poetic Haiku form in the book, in the details that turn the story in new directions, and the tiniest mistakes that lead to tragic and unforeseen outcomes.” Spectator

The blurb

First published in Japanese in 1959, the novel abandoned the template of closed-room mysteries so popular in pre-war Japan to embrace social criticism.

Tokyo, 1958. Teiko marries Kenichi Uhara, ten years her senior, an advertising man recommended by a go-between. After a four-day honeymoon, Kenichi vanishes. Teiko travels to the coastal and snow-bound city of Kanazawa, where Kenichi was last seen, to investigate his disappearance.

When Kenichi’s brother comes to help her, he is murdered, poisoned in his hotel room. Soon, Teiko discovers that her husband’s disappearance is tied up with the so-called “pan-pan girls”, women who worked as prostitutes catering to American GIs after the war. Now, ten years later, as the country is recovering, there are those who are willing to take extreme measures to hide that past.

My Thoughts

My review will appear nearer to the publication date.

The author

Seichō Matsumoto (1909-1992) was Japan’s most successful thriller writer. His first detective novel, Points and Lines, sold over a million copies in Japan. Vessel of Sand, published in English as Inspector Imanishi Investigates in 1989, sold over four million copies and became a movie box-office hit.

Source: Publisher’s website

The translator

Louise Heal Kawai has been a translator of Japanese literature since 2005. She loves to translate all genres of contemporary fiction. Besides the novels on this list, has published many short stories in online magazines and journals, play scripts and the odd poem. She is always working on something. In 2022 she translated the international bestseller The Cat Who Saved Books, and in 2023 Hideo Yokoyama’s The North Light.

Source: Amazon profile