Hamburg state prosecutor Chastity Riley investigates a series of arson attacks on cars across the city, which leads her to a startling and life-threatening discovery involving criminal gangs and a very illicit love story...

'Another brilliant adventure in the company of Chastity Riley, the coolest character in crime fiction. Darkly funny and written with a huge heart’ Doug Johnstone, Big Issue

'Reading Buchholz is like walking on firecrackers … a truly unique voice in crime fiction’ Graeme Macrae Burnet

‘Caustic, incisive prose. A street-smart, gutsy heroine. A timely and staggeringly stylish thriller’ Will Carver

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Night after night, cars are set alight across the German city of Hamburg, with no obvious pattern, no explanation and no suspect.

Until, one night, on Mexico Street, a ghetto of high-rise blocks in the north of the city, a Fiat is torched. Only this car isn’t empty. The body of Nouri Saroukhan – prodigal son of the Bremen clan – is soon discovered, and the case becomes a homicide.

Public prosecutor Chastity Riley is handed the investigation, which takes her deep into a criminal underground that snakes beneath the whole of Germany. And as details of Nouri’s background, including an illicit relationship with the mysterious Aliza, emerge, it becomes clear that these are not random attacks, and there are more on the cards...

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‘A stylish, whip-smart thriller’ Russel McLean

‘Lyrical and pithy’ Sunday Times 

‘Fierce enough to stab the heart’ Spectator

‘Sharp and unrelenting’ CultureFly

‘Simone Buchholz writes with real authority and a pungent, noir-ish sense of time and space’ Financial Times

‘Deeply moody, atmospheric and evocative’ Blue Book Balloon

‘An unconventional, refreshing new voice’ Crime Fiction Lover

Translated by: Rachel Ward