Hotel Cartagena by Simone Buchholz

 

This is the fourth novel in this excellent series and our protagonist, Public Prosecutor Chastity Riley, is celebrating a friend’s birthday with friends and colleagues (all regulars from previous titles) in a hotel bar when twelve heavily armed men pull out guns, and take everyone hostage. Among the hostages is Konrad Hoogsmart, the hotel owner, who is the target of the raid and the reason for the hostage taking.

Hotel Cartagena differs from the previous titles, which were much more police procedurals (albeit Chastity being a prosecutor, but that’s how it works in European legal systems where the prosecution is involved to a greater extent in directing the investigation than in the UK and America where investigations are the preserve of the police). Hotel Cartagena is different in that our protagonist and her colleagues are hostages and thus are much more passive. Instead, they witness all that transpires, and the story is told much more from the lead hostage taker’s point of view, with chapters alternating between the present day hostage crisis (and told from the hostages point of view) and chapters narrating the history of the main hostage taker, and which detail how he became involved and why.

Hotel Cartagena is a short novel, but it moves along at quite a clip and is interesting and engaging. I’ve always loved this series because of my love of the city of Hamburg where the series is set, and one thing I like about the books is how the author brings a different aspect of Hamburg (and indeed Germany) to life in each. Hotel Cartagena is no different and a lot of the action takes place around the famous harbour, with first our hostage taker hitching a ride on a cargo ship to South America and later the hostage crisis occurring in one of the many luxury hotels to overlook the docks.

As with the series as a whole, the author writes this novel in the noir style reminiscent of Raymond Chandler, with Riley’s internal monologue sardonic and wisecracking even when all looks bleak. The narrative zings off the page and brings the tale to life.

Simone Buchholz’s novels are one of my favourite crime series, and this fourth outing doesn’t disappoint. And as with all the titles, I applaud the publisher Orenda for the cover art, because it’s a thing of beauty and does justice to a wonderful book.

4 out of 5 stars