Blue Night

by Simone Buchholz

Translated by Rachel Ward

Orenda Books

Publication Date : March 30, 2018

Pages : 376

Synopsis From Publisher:

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. When she discovers that a friend and former colleague is trying to bring down Hamburg’s Albanian mafia kingpin single-handedly, it looks like Chas Riley’s dull life on witness protection really has been short-lived…

My initial thought after reading Blue Night was “I hope there is a sequel in the works for this book”. Blue Night is filled with shady characters and loads of unknown past events and circumstances. Not since The Chalk Man by CJ Tudor have I read a book with so many characters which I found so interesting and compelling. Blue Night is a fast paced, mysterious, riveting, read that will leave you satisfied yet wanting much more.

The characters in Blue Night are all complex and finagled into some sort of tragedy or a budding tragedy. In addition they are all friends of Chasity Riley. Although Chasity is the main character, she seems to have the least going on. Chasity is fresh off of a very turbulent period of her life but her friends have more than enough issues to keep her busy. Chasity although tough and brash at times is also compassionate and caring. She is loyal to her friends and tries to help them in any way she can. I suspect she is trying to reciprocate the kindness and love she received from her friends when she was going through a rough time.

Chasity Riley was once a tough, no nonsense prosecuting attorney in Hamburg, Germany. After convicting one of her bosses of corruption and a violent altercation with a suspect, she has been benched. Chasity has been assigned to Witness Protection. In Witness Protection, Chasity is responsible for people who were victims of a violent crime and survived the attacks. Chasity is assigned the case of a man named “Joe” who was severely beaten. Chasity’s prosecutorial instincts are soon kicked into high gear and she realizes there is a big story behind Joe’s beating.

The formatting for Blue Night is a bit different than other books I have read.  Between each chapter, there are flashbacks to each of the characters pasts. I have read books which featured flashbacks but these flashbacks are just glimpses; some are only a few sentences long. The flashbacks begin very early on in the story, before all of the characters have been introduced. This was a little confusing at first but once I met every character I was able to follow the formatting easily.

Buchholz managed to provide just enough info on each character to make them interesting yet mysterious. There are mentions of past events, enough info so the reader will get the jist of the character’s background but not many details. Usually I would find this lack of character development disappointing; instead I was intrigued and wanted to know more about each character. I hope Blue Night is not the last I read of Chasity Riley.

 **Thanks to Orenda Books for my free copy of Blue Night**

Murder and Moore Rating:

4 ½ out of 5 Stars

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