Blog Tour ~ Review ~ Blue Night by Simone Bucholez. Translated by Rachel Ward.

Description After convicting a superior for corruption and shooting off a gangster’s crown jewels, the career of Hamburg’s most hard-bitten state prosecutor, Chastity Riley, has taken a nose dive: she has been transferred to the tedium of witness protection to prevent her making any more trouble. However, when she is assigned to the case of an anonymous man lying under police guard in hospital – almost every bone in his body broken, a finger cut off, and refusing to speak in anything other than riddles – Chastity’s instinct for the big, exciting case kicks in. Using all her powers of persuasion, she soon gains her charge’s confidence, and finds herself on the trail to Leipzig, a new ally, and a whole heap of lethal synthetic drugs.

Review

I would like to thank the writer Simon Bucholz, publisher Orenda Books and blog tour organiser for the ARC of Blue Night in return for an honest review.

When I first started Blue Night I wasn’t convinced it was a book I was going to enjoy! By the end I was enthralled, addicted and had found a new favourite author.

The story and writing slowly seep into your soul, to the extent that I found it almost impossible to put it down! If my boss hadn’t insisted I actually do some work I would not have done so.

I needed to know what happened and seemed to be in a  constant state of anxiety about the fate of my favourite characters. It’s the sign of a great thriller, that you are carried along by what feels like an unstopple force and Blue Night had that affect on me.

It’s a first class piece of story telling, with believable characters and based in a gritty reality.  It takes the reader into the violent world of drug dealing and trafficking, but keeps strong characterisation at it’s heart, which to me as a reader is vital.

The novel is full of dark themes, but is at all times thrilling and unnerving.

Blue Night can be purchased from Amazon and Waterstones.

Author Bio.

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 the second Place of the German Crime Fiction Prize for Blue Night, which was number one on the KrimiZEIT Best of Crime List for months. She lives in Sankt Pauli, in the heart of Hamburg, with her husband and son.

Publisher Orenda Books.