Peter Sarda is a third-generation Californian living and working in Hamburg, Germany. Publishers Weekly compares his hardboiled crime fiction to that of Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain, Philip Kerr, Jakob Arjouni, and Simone Buchholz.

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. Edda Green is cited in The Strand Mystery Magazine’s spring 2025 reading list.

Sarda has contributed the following articles to CWA’s Red Herrings:

• “Babylon Berlin: Back to the Roots of Film Noir” (June 2025)

He’s a “shamus” of the Film Noir Foundation and the primary source for “Crime and the City: Hamburg” on CrimeReads.