Hansjörg Schneider – Silver Pebbles

Silver Pebbles is the prequel to The Basel Killings which I have previously read and really enjoyed. It is part of a ten book series featuring Basel police inspector Peter Hunkeler, a character with legendary status in crime fiction written in German. The book is translated into English by Mike Mitchell and is excellently done. Now for the synopsis.

A Lebanese man carrying diamonds in his bag is on the train from Frankfurt to Basel, a drug mule on the return journey. At the Basel train station Inspector Hunkeler is waiting for him after a tipoff from the German police. The courier manages to flush the stones away in the station WC. Erdogan, a young Turkish sewage worker, finds the diamonds in the pipes under the station. To him they mean wealth and the small hotel he always wanted to buy near his hometown. To his older Swiss girl-friend Erika, the stones signify the end of their life together. She knows that Erdogan has a wife and children in Turkey. For the courier, finding the stones is a matter of life and death. His employers are on their way to “tidy things up”. For Hunkeler the stones are the only way to get to the people behind the drug trade. They turn out to include not only the bottom feeding drug gangs, but bankers and politicians very high up the Basel food chain.

When I saw that I was invited to another Bitter Lemon Press book, I was so happy to accept my invitation. I have developed a love for translated fiction over the past two years, and I find every Bitter Lemon Press book excellent.

Silver Pebbles is a relatively short book so I found I sped through it in no time. I loved  being back in Basel with Hunkeler and witnessing the events before The Basel Killings. This book shows us how just dreaming of more from life can end with you caught in a net created for the criminals in life.

The setting of Silver Pebbles was so well done. Being taken back to the 1990s and feeling like I was there, too. Just as I found with his previous book, the author starts as he means to go on with an exciting and fast-paced story that doesn’t let up for once. The characters I found were as great as in his last book. I found them relatable and was dying to find out what happened to them.

I read this in a day and a half; it was so thrilling. I really do appreciate the fact that we can now read novels from other countries so easily these days, they are like finding diamonds too.

Thank you to Anne Cater of Random Things Tours and Bitter Lemon Press for my gifted paperback copy. All opinions are entirely mine.