2.5
Silver Pebbles
ByPublisher Description
A hunt for drug gang diamonds is keeping Basel Inspector Hunkeler on tenterhooks.
Basel, nestled at the border of Switzerland with Germany and France, has been hammered by a huge snowstorm, cars and trams can barely move, trees are groaning under the weight of the recent snowfall, the cathedral and city roofs are smothered. An elegant young 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 get to the station toilet and flushes the stones away. Erdogan, a young Turkish sewage maintenance 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 family village. To his older Swiss girl-friend Erika, employed at a supermarket checkout counter, 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.
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesSilver Pebbles Reviews
2.5
“Could not hold my attention. Seemed so wasteful of a story. Did not finish.”“This my second I have read by this author. The other being The Basel Killings. Which I enjoyed but I enjoyed this one more. Why I don't know; the writing was equally good in both.
The story centres round Guy Kayat and the loss of the diamonds he is carrying. The proceeds of the drug trade. To evade being caught by the police with the diamonds in his possession. Lost , gone forever? No a sewer worker finds them and being Turkish migrant worker dreams of living the high life. This character, Erdogan Civil fails to see that this makes him a target. Not only by Kayat and his drug cartel but also by the police led by Peter Hunkeler.
The writing is good and the characters well fleshed out and all are essential to the story.
Peter Hunkeler, the main police officer is a person trapped in a job he both likes and loathes. Likes in that he feels he is serving his community and loathes in that he must follow his superiors who ignore some of his more out there ideas; like making heroin legal as the best way of smashing the drug cartels.
But the character I liked the best was Erika. A supermarket worker well past her prime who lives with Erdogan even though he has a wife and family in Turkey. She just wants to love and be loved, even if for only part of the year as she knows he must go back to Turkey. But Erdogan's head is turned and he has a bullseye on his back.
A very short read, more of a novella being just over 200 pages. But enjoyable nevertheless. A recommended tale.
Thanks to RandomThingsTours and Bitter Lemon Press for the tourinvite and the ARC.”
“Silver Pebbles by Hansjörg Schneider is an international crime thriller that kept me entertained from start to finish. It’s fast paced with twists and turns, and it is relatively short, so it was a quick read for me.
The translation is great. There are a few places where the language is not quite perfect, but it was originally written in a language I wouldn’t have been able to understand, and I’m happy it was translated so I could enjoy the story.
There are quite a few characters but once I got used to them, it wasn’t difficult to follow at all. I enjoyed the bits of dry humor spread through the story as well.
Overall, I enjoyed Silver Pebbles. If you enjoy fast paced thrillers, I’d recommend giving this a read.
Thank you to Random Things Tours for the free review copy. All opinions are my own and unbiased.”
About Hansjörg Schneider
Hansjörg Schneider (born 1938) lives in Basel and began his professional career as a journalist and essayist. He is the author of a number of highly acclaimed plays and of the bestselling Hunkeler crime series, now with ten titles published. “The Basel Killings” was awarded The Friedrich Glauser Prize, Germany’s most prestigious crime fiction prize.
Other books by Hansjörg Schneider
Mike Mitchell
Mike Mitchell lives in Scotland and has published over eighty translations from German and French, including all the Friedrich Glauser Sergeant Studer novels and Gustav Meyrink's five novels. His translation of Rosendorfer's ‘Letters Back to Ancient China’ won the 1998 Schlegel-Tieck Translation Prize.
Other books by Mike Mitchell
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