The Kitchen

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. Germany's Queen of Krimi returns with the darkly funny, mesmerizingly dark next instalment in an addictive series…

`Blends black comedy with real anger to produce a serious indictment of the male gaze. Simone Buchholz can make you grin, gasp or gag at will’ The Times

`Such a revelation´ Laura Lippman

‘A dark treat … memorable modern noir, and a fascinating portrait of seedy life in Hamburg’ Telegraph

‘Beautifully concise, with commendably sparse prose, dark humour and an appealing protagonist … uncompromising, provocative and righteously fierce’ Guardian

**Book of the Month in The Times, Guardian and Literary Review**

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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 offenders, Chastity takes matters into her own hands. As a link between the two cases emerges, horrifying revelations threaten Chastity's own moral compass, and put everything at risk…

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‘Beautifully written in cool, witty prose’ N.J. Cooper, Literary Review

`German-American Chastity Riley [is] snooty, churlish, sarcastic, sometimes drunk and always inappropriate. The whole series breaks the boundaries of typical crime novels´ Romy Hausmann

`A distinctive voice, and a flawed but compelling protagonist. This is vintage Buchholz – style and sass and St Pauli´ Will Carver

Praise for the Chastity Riley series

***WINNER of the CWA Crime Fiction in Translation Dagger***

***WINNER of the German Crime Book of the Year Award***

`Ice-cool, effortlessly classy prose´ Observer

`Reading Buchholz is like walking on firecrackers´ Graeme Macrae Burnet

`Gruesome and assured, Buchholz's work remains as persuasive as ever´ Financial Times

`Simone Buchholz writes with real authority and a pungent, noir-ish sense of time and space … a palpable hit´ Independent

`With brief, pacy chapters and fizzling dialogue, this almost feels like American procedural noir and not a translation´ Maxim Jakubowski

`There is a fantastic pace to the story … a unique voice that delivers a stylish story´ NB Magazine

`A smart and witty book that shines a probing spotlight on society´ CultureFly

`A must-read, stylish and highly original take on the detective novel´ Judith O'Reilly

`A real blast of adrenaline´ Big Issue

`Elmore Leonard fans will be enthralled´ Publishers Weekly

`Buchholz doles out delicious black humour [and] ramps up the intrigue and tension´ Foreword Reviews

`Fierce enough to stab the heart´ Spectator

`A modern classic´ CrimeTime

`A stylish, whip-smart thriller´ Herald Scotland

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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 and was 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 next in the Chastity Riley series, Beton Rouge, won the Radio Bremen Crime Fiction Award and Best Economic Crime Novel 2017.

Rachel Ward is a freelance translator of literary and creative texts from German and French to English. Having always been an avid reader and enjoyed word games and puzzles, she discovered a flair for languages at school and went on to study modern languages at the University of East Anglia. She spent the third year working as a language assistant at two grammar schools in Saaebrücken, Germany. During her final year, she realized that she wanted to put these skills and passions to use professionally and applied for UEA’s MA in Literary Translation, which she completed in 2002.