River Clyde

State prosecutor Chastity Riley runs off to Glasgow. Because, for one, there is that letter, written by a lawyer, that lures her to the birthplace of her great-great-grandfather. And secondly, her life in Hamburg has arrived at a sad impasse. In the rough Scottish city she meets Tom, who knows the key that unlocks the Rileys’ family secret – a panorama of violence and loss. She had always had a hunch about this but never dared confront the painful truths about herself. Now, a great amount of whisky and a few ghosts help her to do just that after all.

As an entire street burns in Hamburg, a few estate agents shoot off each other’s faces and Inspector Stepanovic refuses to work, Riley battles the ghosts of her past in Glasgow. And the lost souls that could be her future.

»If Philip Marlowe and Bernie Gunther got together in a Hamburg speakeasy and had a literary love child, then that might just explain Chastity Riley – Simone Buchholz’s tough, acerbic and utterly engaging central character.« William Ryan, author of The Constant Soldier

»Razor-sharp dialogues, psychological studies thrown down in precise strokes, fast-paced scenes, and on top of that the merciless combination of irony and melancholia […] plus a certain amount of craziness – this is what the author knows how to do as skilfully as hardly anyone else.« Alexander Cammann, DIE ZEIT

»... a pas de deux at the edge of the abyss, full of eerily beautiful weightlessness ...« Hannes Hintermeier, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

»... a novel about crisis, the portrait of a damaged soul, a road movie in book form set in Hamburg and Scotland.« Britta Schmeis, Welt am Sonntag

»Readers […] already had many opportunities to get used to this rather eccentric investigator. And how wonderful those opportunities were! Because Simone Buchholz’ novels have […] a very unique, original, ambitious sound.« Sylvia Staude, Frankfurter Rundschau

»... a worthy conclusion of this extremely special series. Her fans are going to miss Riley sorely.« Brigitte

»If James Joyce and Bruce Willis had a literary daughter, her name would be Simone Buchholz.« Bayern 2

»Simone Buchholz has long since managed to burst open the boundaries of the genre of crime fiction, and this time we are even dealing with real ghosts – a worthy conclusion for this extremely special series.« Maike Schnitzler, Brigitte Woman

»Atmospherically dense and very poetic ...« Andrea Gerk, NDR