Bad Cop is the second book in Peter Sarda's crime thriller series, Hamburg Noir, which Publishers Weekly recommends for fans of Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain, Philip Kerr, Jakob Arjouni, and Simone Buchholz. After putting away the head of the Albanian mafia in Hamburg, Homicide Detectives Thomas Ritter and Motz Beck are confronted with a bloody war to control the local drug trade in the mobster's absence. First an Albanian courier is shotgunned to death at the edge of Hamburg Harbor. Then a Hells Angel gets the same treatment on the Alster River. As the bodies pile up, Ritter and Beck are forced to work with an organized crime expert, a burned-out narcotics agent with his own drug issues. Before long, they suspect that their new partner is working for one of the rival gangs.