Welcome to my stop on the blog tour for this complex police procedural and the first in a series to feature DCI Eve West.
With thanks to Damp Pebbles for organising the tour and for providing a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.
Welcome to my stop on the blog tour for ‘The Bone Code’ by Kathy Reichs, the latest in the forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan series of thrillers.
With thanks to Random Things Tours and publisher Simon and Schuster for my copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
I was lucky to win a set of the books published so far in the Chastity Riley series – thanks to lovely Jen on Twitter.
This series is published by the fab people at Orenda Books and is bestselling in its native country, Germany.
Given all the excellent things I’d heard about this series, plus the fact that all four gorgeous novels had just arrived in the post, I thought I’d give it a go. Obviously, Book 1 was my starting point, so in I went with ‘Blue Night’.
One of the hugely appealing things about the series is that it is set in Hamburg, a place I visited a few years ago. Buchholz’s Hamburg is a seedy and corrupt place, filled with drug dealers, gangsters and prostitutes in the famous Reeperbahn district. I’d like to point out that this is a way away from the Hamburg my family experienced – the Miniatur Wunderland with its huge model railway was more our thing – but it was nice to be able to picture some of the settings and buildings mentioned in the novel.
The story centres on a mysterious man in hospital after a brutal attack. Chastity Riley, our heroine and a state prosecutor, is assigned to his case and immediately senses that there is something worth following up. Initially the man is uncooperative, but Chastity soon wins him over with her contraband alcohol and tobacco smuggled into the hospital. This puts her on the trail of a huge case involving synthetic drugs and one of Hamburg’s criminal overlords…
Hopefully, everything I’ve written so far has given the impression that this is a dark book! It is similar in style to some of the Nordic Noir books that I’ve read – a kind of Hamburg Noir packed with sweary and straight-talking people, drugs and heavy drinking, gritty storylines and a shadowy criminal underworld.
As much as I love Nordic Noir, I was so pleased to find that this book was considerably funnier than some of its Scandinavian counterparts. Chastity is a fabulous narrator with a dry sense of humour and a lively turn of phrase – I’m not sure whether to credit Buchholz herself for this or some nifty translation work by Rachel Ward. All of Chastity’s first-person narration is written in her distinctive, sweary, colloquial voice – and it works brilliantly. It’s like being told a story by a really indiscreet, funny, brutally honest friend.
I did find it harder to get my head around some of the other characters in the book – I think they will come into their own later in the series perhaps. In particular, I loved cafe owners Carla and Rocco – Chastity’s friends – and wanted to see more of them as being slightly more of the ‘normal’ world outside the crime and law enforcement community.
Although most of the book is told by Chastity, there are sections that form flashbacks in multiple voices involved with the story. At the start, it isn’t obvious who some of them are but it becomes clearer – a really clever device that filled in gaps in Chastity’s narrative, dropped clues and gave some back-story.
Overall, I found this an engaging and lively series opener – I will definitely carry on and read the rest. I loved the narrative voice, even though the story was grittier than my usual choice of books, and I’d recommend that everyone take a peek into Chastity’s Hamburg underworld.
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This book isn’t my usual genre, but I’d seen lots of positive things about it on Twitter and fancied a fun, lighter read as a break from my usual crime novels. I did wonder how the main conceit (a woman taking her friend’s highly skilled job) would be sustained over the whole novel and looked forward to losing myself in Birdy’s world.
The novel follows Birdy (Elizabeth Finch) as she steps into her friend’s job in a Scottish restaurant – her friend Heather has run off to Rome with her lover and it seems a shame that a cushy job will be unfilled, so Birdy steps in. It’s far enough away from her life – and disastrous relationship – in London for people to suspect she isn’t Heather, the top class sommelier. Except for the fact that Birdy knows nothing about wine. Things get more complicated when she gets to the restaurant and meets the attractive chef…
Living as an imposter certainly throws a few problems Birdy’s way.
I’ll admit I was sceptical about some of the set-up. I’m not sure who asks their friend to turn down a job offer for them and am not sure you could ever pass as someone else for any length of time with social media so prevalent. However, Dent deals with these hitches well and the book is so cheery and funny that my reservations melted away.
I really enjoyed the Scottish setting, a long way from Birdy’s natural London habitat but gloriously described and written with real love. The restaurant itself was peopled with a lively and believable cast – anyone who has worked in catering or restaurants will recognise some of the types. I particularly loved Roxy, the trainee wine expert who helps Birdy out when her skills as a sommelier are being so sorely tested. It was also hard not to like and feel sorry for Bill, struggling with his own issues but smoothing the way for Birdy when he could.
Birdy herself is likeable and funny – there’s lots of self-deprecating humour that made me laugh and it was easy to feel sympathy for her as she worked hard to overcome her total lack of the specialist knowledge that she had supposedly been hired for. Indeed, her drive to make the best of the situation and not let her friend down made her an appealing character. She comes to really care about the restaurant – although not before a few disasters along the way.
I liked the love interest in the novel, James, although – for me – the central storyline was really Birdy finding her feet and place in the world. That this included a handsome Scottish chef was fine with me, and he came across well – although slightly lacking the warmth and humour of the female characters. Still, it was a romance I felt invested in and definitely preferable to Birdy’s London boyfriend who is just outrageously awful.
I’d recommend this to anyone looking for a fun and engaging book. There’s plenty to keep you reading – even as you wince at Birdy’s faux pas, warm to her colleagues and wonder what on earth Heather is going to make of it all when she finds out!
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for granting me a free copy of this in exchange for an honest review.
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Header photo by Toa Heftiba on Unsplash.
