Hamburg Noir

Highway 99 Press
November 2020
280 pages

978-3-9822665-0-3
978-3-9822665-2-7

HAMBURG NOIR 1

One-Way Ticket


Be careful what you wish for.

When Homicide Detective Thomas Ritter transfers to Hamburg, he has no idea he has stepped into the biggest police scandal in the city's history. No one told Ritter that his new partner, Motz Beck, is a moody biker with family ties to local mob boss Willi Kaiser, who controls the red-light district. Or that Kaiser is fighting a hostile takeover from the head of the Albanian mafia, the silent real estate partner of a prominent senator. After Hamburg's top cop is found dead in a Kaiser whorehouse, Ritter and Beck conclude that the only people they trust less than each other are their bosses in City Hall.


 
Fans of noir fiction will revel in this twisty story of tough cops, brutal gangsters and other denizens of Hamburg’s underworld.
— Publishers Weekly
 
 
Any reader who loves a hardboiled mystery and a tenacious sleuth will be quickly drawn in by this subtle but savage work of crime fiction.
— SPR
 
 
The absorbing story will keep readers guessing until the final pages.
— Kirkus Reviews
 

Review

Publishers Weekly
8 March 2021

This gritty police procedural, set in modern-day Hamburg, Germany, portrays a team of tough homicide detectives who delve into the city's grim underbelly in all its noirish glory. Thomas Ritter, a police officer with a mysterious past, transfers to Hamburg to take charge of a detective squad. He and his crew find themselves immersed in a murder with political overtones, when local official Mertens dies during an S&M game at a brothel. The investigation reveals ties to a well-connected crime boss, a dominatrix and her ex-con girlfriend, and a ruthless Albanian smuggler, whose stories come together in an explosive finish.

Sarda, an American living in Germany, brings Hamburg's seedy side to life, with black-humored dialog and descriptions well-suited to a dark and violent story. When Ritter notes that the prison looks old-fashioned compared to the one in Frankfurt, another officer says, "We’re more traditional here. Still got bullet holes in the back wall, next to the guillotine." A suicide comes across in stark, bleak prose: "The steam took the sting out of the first cut. She didn’t even feel the second...…Let it flow. Let it all out." Sarda doesn't stint on graphic descriptions of sex and violence -- this is vigorous prose appropriate to the milieu but not for the easily offended.

Ritter has a wounded psyche and his attempts to come to terms with who he has become thread through the book. Also well-limned is his partner Motz Beck, fighting his own inner demons and penchant for violence. Ritter and Motz's joint interrogation brilliantly shows how these two detectives, in spite of -- or perhaps because of -- their damaged characters, subtly break down a suspect. A pair of sex workers share a romance that elevates the characters far beyond tired stereotypes. With a well-defined cast, an intricate plot, and plenty of action, devotees of hardboiled police procedurals will find themselves breathless by the end

Takeaway: Fans of noir fiction will revel in this twisty story of tough cops, brutal gangsters and other denizens of Hamburg's underworld.

Great for fans of: James M. Cain, Dashiell Hammett, Jakob Arjouni.


Contents

Prologue

  1. Undercover

  2. Fool for Love

  3. Fight Club

  4. Breakfast of Champions

  5. Pay Dirt

  6. Human Qualities

  7. Thin File

  8. Day Shift

  9. Loose Cannon

  10. Old Friends

  11. Pasha Import/Export

  12. Candid Camera

  13. Bad Teacher

  14. Yellow Card

  15. The Bunker

  16. We Have a Problem

  17. Team Building

  18. Pre-Med

  19. Next of Kin

  20. Good Cop, Bad Cop

  21. Strong Horse

  22. Hippocratic Oath

  23. Be Obvious

  24. Involuntary Manslaughter

  25. Behler See

  26. Panic Button

  27. New Arrival

  28. Kicking Ass

  29. Private Investigations

  30. The Shadow

  31. Private Office

  32. U-Haft

  33. Nunnery

  34. Big Board

  35. Sparta

  36. The Third Man

  37. Gamblers Anonymous

  38. The Cage

  39. Black Hand

  40. Ibiza

  41. Monopoly Money

  42. Camp Marmal

  43. Red Light

  44. Itsy Bitsy Spider

  45. Extreme Prejudice

  46. Rat Squad

  47. Welcome to Hamburg

Epilogue

List of characters

List of terms

Acknowledgements


Sample

Prologue

Lars felt the giant shadow before he saw it looming behind him in the bulletproof glass.

“Game time is over,” the giant said.

Lars spun around and looked up into two steel eyes embedded in a beefy skull under a single eyebrow. “What the fuck?” he said. Hasani’s enforcer didn’t normally work indoors.

“He wants to see you.”

Lars smelled garlic. “Let me cash in my chips.” He turned back to the window. The cashier was nowhere to be seen.

“Now,” the giant said.

Lars shifted his weight, keeping his phone hand out of view. His thumb felt around desperately for the SOS button. Holding it down for three seconds activated a GPS alert. Officer in trouble.

“Let’s go,” the giant said.

The button vibrated confirmation.

Lars nodded and put the phone away. Then he pivoted, took a half-step, and put his full weight into the kick.

The giant’s eyes went wide. He went down clutching his groin.

At the blackjack table, bettors looked at them with open mouths. The chef de table was frozen mid-motion, a card in his hand.

Lars slammed into the emergency exit and flew down the steps, using the railing like a sled, bumping into walls at each turn. A herd of buffalos pounded the stairways above his head. Round and round they went. Third floor, second floor, first floor, lobby.

As Lars crashed out of the stairwell, he saw a guard at the front desk talking into his sleeve and staring right at him. Lars flashed his P6 and cleared the turnstile in one fluid motion. Then he blasted through the double glass doors and raced to his Harley. It took him two frantic attempts to jump-start the beast. As it fishtailed out onto the street, he felt rain in his hair.

He made a hard right through a red at Alsterglacis. A double-articulated bus packed with commuters skidded sideways across the intersection. Up ahead was a sea of cars on Kennedybrücke.

A black van crashed through the brush of Gustav Mahler Park and accelerated into his path, its battering ram nearly grazing his right leg.

Lars gunned the chopper onto the frontage road below the bridge and through the underpass. He made a hard left onto Lombardbrücke, somehow bouncing onto the sidewalk without hitting the steel railing.

Needles of rain pelted his face as he weaved in and out of bike paths and around posts. The Alster River flew by on his right, and he kept pace with the InterCity train to his left. A kid waved at him from one of the windows.

Halfway across the bridge, the headlights were gone from his mirror. He almost laughed. Oversized black vans with snatch teams didn’t fit on sidewalks.

He slowed the chopper as the path curved into a wooded area. Wet oak leaves slapped his face as broken cement rattled his spine. The chopper made a looping left at Ferdinandstor and followed the path under a second low bridge. The InterCity screeched above.

A wall of light blinded Lars. He screamed as the railing shattered his knee, flipping the chopper sideways and slamming him into an I-beam. He clawed rusty iron on his way down.

The headlights backed up through the moving spokes of his front wheel. As the van gurgled away, everything went black.

* * *

Lars woke up to a nightmare. He was buried under tons of black oily water, trying to reach the surface. He screamed and screamed, but nothing came out.

“Goddamn it, Lars, wake up!” someone said from far away. A beefy hand slapped his face.

Lars screamed bubbles at the familiar voice. It was Motz! He got the SOS.

“Lars! Don’t you die on me!”

Die? Nobody was going to die, Lars thought. Except maybe Hasani. His badass buddy Motz would rip the Albanian apart at the joints. Lars laughed more bubbles.

 “You’re back!” Motz yelled. “You scared the shit out of me, you bastard.”

 “Ma—” Lars said.

“Yeah, it’s me, partner,” Motz said. “We’ll get you out of here.”

Lars shook himself free of the mask. “Mar-mal!” he screamed. Hasani’s real shipment was coming from Mazar-i-Sharif.

“What?” Motz yelled back.

Lars coughed up something thick and warm.

“Stay with me, Lars!”

“An—” He couldn’t get it all the way out.

“Save your breath, Lars!”

“An–ton!” Lars screamed, spitting out all that slimy warmth. His teeth began to chatter. Damn, was it cold out there.

“Antonov?”

Lars smiled and let go. Motz got it. Hasani was shipping under a Russian flag. They would catch him red-handed this time.

Delicious warmth filled Lars’ mouth. No more of that chattering bullshit, he thought.

“Lars!” Motz yelled. “Stay with me! You hear me, Lars? I mean it, Goddamn it! Lars, you fucking stay with me!”

Lars chewed the thick warmth. Twenty bites before you swallow, like Grandpa Hanson always said.

Motz was drifting up and away. Lars wondered what he was doing up there in all that water. When Motz opened his mouth, he made a woah-woah-woah sound. Then he was just a swaying light that got further and further away. Then he was gone.

A warm wave brushed Lars’ cheek with a gentle whoosh. He snuggled into the delicious dream. He was almost home.