A(nother) Year of Orenda – Hotel Cartagena by Simone Buchholz trns by Rachel Ward

Guess what? Mandie has been enjoying catching up with Chastity Riley so much, she couldn’t miss out on reading and reviewing Hotel Cartagena, so I’m going to hand over to her for her thoughts. Here’s what the book is all about;

About the Book

Chastity Riley and her friends are held hostage in a hotel bar by twelve armed men set on revenge, in a searing, breathtakingly original new thriller from the ‘Queen of Krimi’.

Twenty floors above the shimmering lights of the Hamburg docks, Public Prosecutor Chastity Riley is celebrating a birthday with friends 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 being targeted by a young man whose life and family have been destroyed by Hoogsmart’s actions.

With the police looking on from outside their colleagues’ lives at stake and Chastity on the inside, increasingly ill from an unexpected case of sepsis, the stage is set for a dramatic confrontation and a devastating outcome for the team all live streamed in a terrifying bid for revenge.

Crackling with energy and populated by a cast of unforgettable characters, Hotel Cartagena is a searing, relevant thriller that will leave you breathless.

Mandie’s Thoughts

Hotel Cartagena is the fourth book in the Chastity Riley series, and I have to say that Chasity is a character that has really grown on me over the course of the series. She is one quirky lady that has a bit of a thing about rules and authority in as much as she is not entirely enamoured of them if they get in the way of her job and what she needs to do

This book is a little different from the others in the series as it’s not so much a case that Chastity gets involved in, but a hostage situation (quite literally) and her life is in danger from more than just the hostage takers. To understand why the situation has come about we are given snippets of events in the past and as the main target is slowly revealed. Chastity and her friends are only at the hotel in the first place as they are celebrating Faller’s birthday but not wanting to make a bad situation worse, they don’t let on exactly who some of them are. Ivo is also back but late to the party he is stuck outside, worried about his colleagues, but mainly worried about Chastity whom he has developed real feelings for, and it is causing him to act irrationally at times and not always in a way that is best for the situation that is developing. The pace and tension in this book is no less that I have come to expect from this series and although you could read this without the others I think knowing some of the other stories will just add to the enjoyment of Hotel Cartagena

Simone Buchholz has a definite quirky style that is reflected in some of her characters, I even managed to feel sorry for the main hostage taker or at least understand their motives. There were times that I had to smile as the infection that was taking hold of Chastity got progressively worse and the hallucinations and ramblings set in. I think that this is definitely my favourite book of the series and I do hope that it’s not the last we see of the chaotic, sassy, determined Chastity Riley.

About the Author

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 for 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.

Books in the Chastity Riley Series: