Sharks by Simone Buchholz BLOG TOUR #Sharks #SimoneBuchholz @OrendaBooks @FwdTranslations #BookReview #ChastityRileyReloaded

 

In Wilhelmsburg, Hamburg’s so-called ‘problem area’, an American couple is found brutally murdered in a derelict villa.

Prosecutor Chastity Riley is assigned the case, and quickly finds herself waist-deep in a murky tangle of city planners, shady investors and vanishing officials. The gentrification machine is rolling on, and someone is sending a very clear message.

As November fog settles over the city, Chastity is coughing up blood, her personal life is a slow-motion disaster, and her former colleague, Faller, won’t stop interfering. But nothing’s going to stop her from cutting through the lies – not even the sharks circling ever closer.

Dark, caustic and piercing, Sharks is a searing investigation into greed, power, and the price of resistance in a city devouring itself, from one of Germany’s finest, most original crime writers.

Sharks by Simone Buchholz is published today; 26 February 2026 by Orenda Books and is translated by Rachel Ward. It is Volume 3 in the Chastity Reloaded series. My thanks to the publisher who sent my copy for review as part of this Blog Tour. 

I love crime fiction, I adore a series and I am really very fond of translated literature. Simone Buchholz's Chastity Riley books are some of my favourites. Quirky, original and always compelling Sharks may just be one of her sharpest yet. 

Set in Wilhelmsburg, Hamburg’s so-called ‘problem area’, the novel opens with the brutal murder of an American couple in a derelict villa. It’s a really unsettling beginning; all peeling paint, damp air and the trauma of violence. Prosecutor Chastity Riley is drawn into a case that reaches far beyond a single crime scene. Developers circle. Investors hover. Officials vanish. The gentrification machine grinds on, it seems to be unstoppable.

Chastity, of course, is the perfect guide through this murky plot. Smart-mouthed and sharp-eyed, she narrates in this author's trademark staccato style: short chapters, shorter sentences. Punchy. Wry. Often very funny. Underneath it all, though, there’s always heart.

In Sharks, she’s physically struggling. She's coughing, unwell, absolutely refusing to slow down. She smokes when she shouldn’t. Works when she ought to rest. Ignores advice from colleagues and friends. That stubborn streak is infuriating and entirely in character. Chastity doesn’t just prosecute cases; she lives in them. The corruption she uncovers; city planners in bed with investors, profit before people, communities carved up and sold off, really hits her hard. This isn’t just about solving a murder. It’s about who gets to own a city. Who gets pushed out. Who profits.

Her team are, as ever, a delight. Calabretta’s steady presence balances Chastity’s volatility, and the Faller has returned and is now inconveniently operating outside official structures, this adds friction and spark. There’s history there. And irritation. And perhaps something else.

What I really really love about this series is the way Simone Buchholz winds together personal and political. Chastity’s private life is never neat and tidy, and here it’s fraying at the edges. Yet those friendships, with football and late-night conversations give the novel warmth against the chill of November fog. Hamburg itself feels vivid: damp, tense, shifting beneath the pressure of money and ambition.

I have to mention the translation by Rachel Ward. As ever, it is superb. The author’s voice is distinctive, caustic, rhythmic, razor-edged, and the translation captures it perfectly. The humour is there. The melancholy is there. 

Although part of the Chastity Reloaded strand of the series, Sharks stands beautifully on its own. 

I read it in a single, greedy sitting. It’s lean, fierce and utterly compelling, a crime novel that exposes the predators in sharp suits as clearly as any killer in the shadows.

Highly recommended. Long live Chastity Riley.

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 Krimi ZEIT 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.
Hotel Cartagena won the CWA Crime in Translation Dagger in 2022.
The Acapulco (2023) marked the beginning of the Chastity Reloaded series, with The Kitchen out in 2024.
She lives in Sankt Pauli, in the heart of Hamburg, with her husband and son.

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 realised 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.
Her published translations include Traitor by Gudrun Pausewang and Red Rage by Brigitte Blobel, and she is a Member of the Institute of Translation and Interpreting.

 Follow Rachel on Twitter @FwdTranslations,  and on her website www.forwardtranslations.co.uk