Peter Sarda, a former ditch digger, forklift driver, and paint maker from Bakersfield, California, is the in-house editor at a scientific research facility in Northern Germany. He’s also an incurable addict of hardboiled pulp fiction and film noir.

Sarda’s hardboiled detective series, Hamburg Noir, is set in his adoptive home, a rugged harbor town with lots of old trading money, a “sinful mile” devoted to the world’s oldest profession, and a robust and colorful criminal underworld. In the first book of the series, One-Way Ticket (2020), a new homicide detective with a troubled past steps into the biggest police scandal in Hamburg history. In the second book, Bad Cop (2022), a burned-out narcotics agent with his own drug issues goes very, very bad. In the third book, Edda Green (2024), a former explosives expert in Afghanistan loses her blood brother to brutal killers back home and finds “closure” through scorched earth.

Sarda’s first novel, Cash-n-Carry (2012), is a coming-of-age story based on his rough-and-tumble upbringing in the murder capital of the Golden State.