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. 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.
"'I wish', she says, 'that one day, guys like that would get to feel for themselves the fear they cause people. Just once, just one fucking time. I bet they'd shit themselves. Maybe they'd even die of fear. Can you die of fear?'"
Holy hell - I’ve been following this series for some time now and over time have loved watching Chastity solve crimes and her own issues but this is by far the best book in the series.
It’s explosive, it’s complicated, it’s dark and it delves more into the conflicted, murky side to Chastity that lives in that line between someone who wants to do the right thing and a woman scorned - pushing her to the limits of her humanity and forcing her to figure out who she really is underneath. It forces you to think about that moment you might hurt someone who hurt your friends, or if you’d really care about catching someone killing abusers - holding up a lens to the sheer magnitude of the problem of violence against women and how it really is everywhere. It tapped into something primal, accessed the feminine rage we all know and bear. Add all of this wrenching emotional turmoil to an electric crime thriller with a disturbingly dark murder plot and you’ve got a hell of a book.
Chastity makes a fast-paced, constantly moving story with the trademark no-nonsense, straightforward narration and quick chapters that make it far too easy to read the entire book in a few hours. We get little clues littered throughout, as Chas deals with her personal life on top of the chaos of the case, and some anonymous looks into someone else’s perspective. All we can do is wait in anticipation with the mounting pressure of a bloody murderer on the loose while all the little strands Buchholz wove start to come together in an albeit sudden and circumstantial way but that didn’t take away from the journey there or how Chastity responds.
The Kitchen was a masterpiece of crime fiction and you absolutely need to meet Chas Riley so you can read this too.
- I was gifted an advanced reviewers copy of this title in return for a review.
- Please check content warnings before reading as this title contains sensitive material including sex trafficking, violence, murder, abuse and rape.
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