The Acapulco by Simone Bucholz
State Prosecutor Chastity Riley faces her most challenging case yet, with a violent serial killer at large, who might just be uncatchable...
A serial killer is on the loose in Hamburg, targeting dancers from The Acapulco, a club in the city’s red-light district, taking their scalps as gruesome trophies and replacing them 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 and destructive relationships, 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.
As panic sets in and the death toll rises, it becomes increasingly clear that it may already be too late. For everyone...
About the author
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 KrimiZEIT 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, with The Acapulco out in 2023. She lives in Sankt Pauli, in the heart of Hamburg, with her husband and son.
Review
Despite this being a new title for Orenda this is actually the first book in the Chastity Riley series. This didn’t click for me straight away as I never read the blurbs when it comes to Simone’s books as I always know I will love them. I was there thinking this feels a bit different somehow… I’m an idiot! But it was lovely to get to ‘meet’ Chastity as a fresh faced state prosecutor and understand her background a bit more.
I devoured this book. I sat down to read a few chapters before bed, looked up to see it was 4 am and I was 2/3’s through it. It is those short but snappy chapters that beguile you into going ‘oh I will carry on’ and then time falls away from you and you are sucked into Chastity’s world. I do actually get spellbound reading Simone’s books! The structure of the edits of these books are genius in that regard. I haven’t read any other books like that really this, especially in crime fiction. The chapter headings are so zany and perfect as well. The chapters are seen from Chastity’s viewpoint but we also see a verse in italics which we realise as you progress from the book is from the killer.
This book chilled me to the core and it wasn’t the nature of the killings, which are extreme and extremely dark. But it was to do with Chastity’s reaction to them. She was scared. This is not the norm for her. Her character is all about being kick ass and confident. If something rocks her inner steel you know it is bad.
What always strikes me when reading this series is the beauty of the writing and especially the language. There is no word going spare. Every single one packs a punch with its meaning and that has everything to do with its translation. Rachel Ward has done a brilliant job translating as usual. I'm trying to relearn German at the moment and I know their sentence structure is complex and convoluted at times. How Rachel manages to pull short snappy prose from that is incredible!
A brilliant outing for Chastity Riley and I loved it!
