Thriller set on a private CARIBBEAN ISLAND
Ten Great Books set in HAMBURG
17th July 2025
Ten great books set in Hamburg. Hamburg is Germany’s second-largest city, it is a vibrant port metropolis renowned for its rich maritime heritage and innovative spirit. Often called the “Gateway to the World,” its expansive harbour is one of Europe’s busiest, historically linking the city to global trade.
Key attractions include the UNESCO World Heritage Speicherstadt, a stunning 19th-century warehouse district crisscrossed by canals, and the futuristic Elbphilharmonie concert hall, an architectural marvel. Hamburg boasts more bridges than Venice and Amsterdam combined.
The city also offers a lively cultural scene, from the famous Reeperbahn nightlife district (where The Beatles honed their skills) to numerous museums, theatres, and green spaces like Planten un Blomen park. Its strong economy is diversified and makes Hamburg a highly livable and cosmopolitan destination.
Here are ten of our favourite books set in this great city.
Human Rites by J J Marsh
Judgement is in the eye of the beholder.
Adrian Harvey, London wine merchant, has lost the Christmas spirit. Someone is stalking him, stealing his post and vandalising his shop. When the police question him after an anonymous tip-off, he’s more than anxious. He’s scared. And who is that nun?
When long time neighbour and friend, DI Beatrice Stubbs is dispatched to Germany to investigate a series of apparently related art thefts, Adrian seizes the chance to flee the city. He follows her to Hamburg to do some Christmas shopping and visit his ex. Yet that stalker is still on his heels.
While Beatrice is on the trail of a violent gang of mercenary thieves, Adrian runs from danger to the remote island of Sylt. But when danger catches up, he has run too far. From the icy streets of Hamburg, to the canals of Amsterdam, and the snowswept beaches of Sylt, Beatrice and Adrian discover how a virtue taken to extremes can lead to deadly sin.
The Kitchen by Simone Buchholz
Hamburg State Prosecutor Chastity Riley and her colleagues investigate the murders of men with a history of abuse towards women … as a startling, horrifying series of revelations emerge.
When neatly packed male body parts wash up by the River Elbe, Hamburg State Prosecutor Chastity Riley and her colleagues begin a perplexing investigation.
As the murdered men are identified, it becomes clear that they all had a history of abuse towards women, leading Riley to wonder if it would actually be in society’s best interests to catch the killers.
But when her best friend Carla is attacked, and the police show little interest in tracking down the offenders, Chastity takes matters into her own hands. As a link between the two cases emerges, horrifying revelations threaten Chastity’s own moral compass, and put everyone at incalculable risk…
A Most Wanted Man by John le Carré
A half-starved young Russian man in a long black overcoat is smuggled into Hamburg at dead of night. He has an improbable amount of cash secreted in a purse round his neck. He is a devout Muslim. Or is he? He says his name is Issa. Annabel, an idealistic young German civil rights lawyer, determines to save Issa from deportation. Soon her client’s survival becomes more important to her than her own career. In pursuit of Issa’s mysterious past, she confronts the incongruous Tommy Brue, the sixty-year-old scion of Brue Frères, a failing British bank based in Hamburg. A triangle of impossible loves is born. Meanwhile, scenting a sure kill in the so-called War on Terror, the spies of three nations converge upon the innocents. Poignant, compassionate, peopled with characters the reader never wants to let go, A MOST WANTED MAN is alive with humour, yet prickles with tension until the last heart-stopping page. It is also a work of deep humanity, and uncommon relevance to our times.
Brother Grimm by Craig Russell
A girl’s body lies, posed, on the pale sand of a Hamburg beach, a message concealed in her hand. ‘I have been underground, and now it is time for me to return home…’
Jan Fabel, of the Hamburg murder squad, struggles to interpret the twisted imagery of a dark and brutal mind. Four days later, a man and a woman are found deep in woodland, their throats slashed deep and wide, the names ‘Hansel’ and ‘Gretel’, in the same, tiny, obsessively neat writing, rolled tight and pressed into their hands.
As it becomes clear that each new crime is a grisly reference to folk stories collected almost two hundred years ago by the Brothers Grimm, the hunt is on for a serial killer who is exploring our darkest, most fundamental fears. A predator who kills and then disappears into the shadows.
A monster we all learned to fear in childhood.
The Aftermath by Rhidian Brook
Hamburg, 1946. Thousands remain displaced in what is now the British Occupied Zone. Charged with overseeing the rebuilding of this devastated city and the de-Nazification of its defeated people, Colonel Lewis Morgan has requisitioned a fine house on the banks of the Elbe, where he will be joined by his grieving wife Rachael and only remaining son Edmund.
But rather than force its owners, a German widower and his traumatised daughter, to leave their home, Lewis insists that the two families live together. In this charged and claustrophobic atmosphere all must confront their true selves as enmity and grief give way to passion and betrayal.
The Invention of Curried Sausage by Uwe Timm
The Invention of Curried Sausage is an ingenious, revealing, and delightful novel about the invention of a popular German sidewalk food. Uwe Timm has heard claims that currywurst first appeared in Berlin in the 1950s, but he seems to recall having eaten it much earlier, as a boy in his native Hamburg, at a stand owned and operated by Lena Brücker. He decides to check it out. Although the discovery of curried sausage is eventually explained, it is its prehistory – about how Lena Brücker met, seduced and held captive a German deserter in Hamburg, in April, 1945, just before the war’s end-that is the tastiest part. Timm draws gorgeous details from Lena’s fine-grained recollections, and the pleasure these provide her and the reader supply the tale’s real charm.
The Hidden Storyteller by Mandy Robotham
International bestselling author Mandy Robotham returns with a brand new tale set in war-torn Germany.
The war is over. But there are still secrets to be found amidst the ashes . . .
Hamburg, 1946
The war is over, and Germany is in ruins. Posted to an Allied-run Hamburg, reporter Georgie Young returns to the country she fled seven years prior – at the onset of the conflict – to find it unrecognisable.
Amongst the stark horrors of a bombed-out city crumbling under the weight of millions of displaced souls, she discovers pockets of warmth: a violinist playing amidst the wreckage, couples dancing in the streets, and a nation trying to make amends.
Joining forces with local detective Harri Schroder to catch a killer targeting women on the city’s streets, curiosity draws Georgie deep into the dark underbelly, and she soon discovers that some secrets of war did not die with Hitler…
The next gripping and heart-wrenching historical fiction novel from international bestseller, Mandy Robotham.
4 a.m. by Nina De La Mer
Set in the early 1990s on a British army base, 4 a.m. tells the story of Cal and Manny, soldiers posted to Germany as army chefs. Bored and institutionalised, the pair soon succumb to the neon temptations of Hamburg’s red-light district, where they dive into a seedy world of recreational drugs and all-night raves. But it is only a matter of time before hedonism and military discipline clash head on, with comic and poignant consequences.
Life-affirming raving soon gives way to gloomy, drug-fuelled nights in fast food restaurants, at sex shows, and in Turkish dive bars. As a succession of events ratchets up the pressure on Cal and Manny their friendship is tested, a secret is revealed, and a shocking betrayal changes one of their lives forever. 4 a.m. depicts life in a peacetime Army and a civilian world in which conflict is never far away. Driven by two distinctive voices, and written in a lively and buzzing style, Nina de la Mer’s début novel holds a mirror up to youth culture at the end of the twentieth century. The reflection is not always a flattering one.
The German Girl by Lily Graham
‘Our parents were taken. And if we go home, the Nazis will take us too…’
Hamburg 1938. Fifteen-year-old Asta is hurrying home from school with her twin brother Jurgen. The mood in the city is tense – synagogues have been smashed with sledgehammers, and Asta is too frightened to laugh as she used to.
But when she and Jurgen are stopped in the street by a friend, her world implodes further. Her Jewish parents have been dragged into the streets by German soldiers and if she and Jurgen return to their house, they will be taken too.
Heartbroken at the loss of her parents, Asta knows they must flee. With her beloved brother, she must make the perilous journey across Germany and into Denmark to reach their only surviving relative, her aunt Trine, a woman they barely know.
Jammed into a truck with other refugees, Asta prays for a miracle to save herself and Jurgen. Crossing the border is a crime punishable by death, and what she and Jurgen must embark on a dangerous crossing on foot, through the snowy forest dividing Germany and Denmark. And when barking dogs and armed soldiers find Jurgen and Asta escapes, she must hold on to hope no matter what. One day she will find her twin, the other half of herself. Whatever the price she has to pay…
A gripping and poignant read that will break your heart and give you hope. Fans of Fiona Valpy, Kristin Hannah and Catherine Hokin will be gripped by the story of a brave brother and sister seeking safety during one of the darkest times in our history.
The Woman Outside The Walls by Suzanne Goldring
I always knew it would come out one day. They are finding everyone who has stayed hidden. They would have come to me in the end.
Hamburg, 1942. Seventeen-year-old Anna knows she can never tell her proud parents the truth about where she is going. She must hide the fact that she is pregnant, that the father of her unborn child is dead and that she is on her way to a special maternity home, where her baby will be given to a perfect family. She tells herself that this is the best solution. She doesn’t expect to feel the rush of love for her beautiful baby boy in the white blanket, or the devastation when he is snatched from her, never to be seen again.
Desperate to forget her grief, she sees an advert for a secretary in a prison, far away in the east. Days later, she leaves Hamburg, travelling eastwards by train, feeling as if a whole new life is about to begin. It is the biggest mistake she will ever make.
London, 2016. Ninety-year-old Anna sits on the edge of her bed, hands trembling, eyes brimming with tears, as she looks at the picture of the soldier in the newspaper. Her friends and neighbours know her as a kindly old lady who bakes cakes and always has time to listen to their troubles. They don’t know about the hated green uniform she burned, the memories of the prisoners she tried to help and the bombed and blackened city she once called home. But now the time for a reckoning has come, will revealing the truth free Anna or destroy her?
A gripping read that will break your heart and have you hooked, perfect for fans of The Alice Network, The Nightingale and My Name is Eva. The Woman Outside the Walls will take you on an emotional journey and show you that in war, even when you are on the wrong side, you can still do the right thing…
Enjoy our selection of great books set in Hamburg!
Tony for the TripFiction Team
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