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Chastity Riley is slogging through her new duties as a member of the Hamburg Witness Protection Program; she was demoted because she accused some superiors of corruption and (probably more to the point) she shot a gangster's crown jewels off. She is all too aware of the short-term and long-term effects this is having on her career. Riley doesn't think much about all of this, especially when it comes to her sort-of love life with a man who used to be "connected." Riley's attention to her career comes sharply into focus when she is assigned to protect a man known as John Doe. Mr. Doe was brutally attacked, and his right index finger was removed. He won't talk about anything at all, least of all who might have kicked him half to death or why they removed his finger. Coffee loosens his tongue, but not about anything relevant. More intriguing still is his statement that he can and will pay his bill, which will be substantial, in cash. Mr. Doe does drop hints here and there; Riley is quick to take those hints and run with them, finding out more about Mr. Doe than he is at first cognizant of.
While Riley is keeping an eye on Mr. Doe, one of her partners is actively doing something everyone around him considers to be incredibly dangerous and probably stupidly deadly: he is taking public pokes at the local crime lord, an Albanian who is trying his best to get out of criminal activities while still reaping their financial benefits. Gjergj Malaj has killed people for far less than this. Georg Faller knows this and still he keeps prodding the bear. When Riley finds out about this, she starts poking into Malaj's career with an eye to protecting her buddy Faller.
I found BLUE NIGHT a difficult book to read for the first third of the novel. There are many characters and it takes a while, even with close reading, to sort out relationships and roles (which may or may not overlap). The threads are all there; the web they make comes together slowly and delicately. It does help that there are significant chunks of writing from Riley's point of view; these are interspersed with brief, almost note-like, bits from various other characters and these brief bits are always identified by character name. This particular format does move the book right along; pacing is swift. The deeper I got into the book, the more the plot devices worked together to make the story coherent and cohesive. The writing is graphic and compelling; Ms. Ward does (as near as I can tell) an excellent job translating. There is violence, almost all of it off-stage; Buchholz leaves much to the imagination and what she puts out there is relevant and works to the benefit of the story. BLUE NIGHT shares the city of Hamburg with the reader. Buchholz takes us on a tour that normal tourists won't see, down streets tourists don't dare go down - mean streets with a woman who is herself not mean. I'd be delighted to read more about Ms. Riley and her city. BLUE NIGHT was worth the work.
§ I have been reading and reviewing mystery fiction for over a quarter of a century and read broadly within just about all genres and sub-genres. I have been a preliminary judge for the Malice Domestic/St. Martin's Press Best First Traditional Mystery Novel Contest for at least 25 years. I live in Northern lower Michigan with my spousal unit, one large cat, and 2 fairly small dogs.
Reviewed by PJ Coldren, August 2018
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