Beton Rouge

Description

On a warm September morning, an unconscious man is found in a cage at the entrance to the offices of one of the biggest German magazines. Closer inspection shows he is a manager of the company, and he's been tortured. Three days later, another manager appears in similar circumstances. Chastity Riley and her new colleague Ivo Stepanovic are tasked with uncovering the truth behind the attacks, an investigation that goes far beyond the revenge they first suspect ... to the dubious past shared by both victims. Travelling to the south of Germany, they step into the hothouse world of boarding schools, where secrets are currency, and monsters are bred ... monsters who will stop at nothing to protect themselves.

Simone Buchholz was born in Hanau in 1972. At university, she studied Philosophy and Literature, worked as a waitress and a columnist, and trained to be a journalist at the prestigious Henri-Nannen-School in Hamburg. In 2016, Simone Buchholz was awarded the Crime Cologne Award as well as runner-up in the German Crime Fiction Prize for Blue Night, which was number one on the KrimiZEIT Best of Crime List for months. She lives in Sankt Pauli, in the heart of Hamburg, with her husband and son.

By turns lyrical and pithy ... disgraced state prosecutor Chastity Riley chases around the dive bars of the port city pursuing and being pursued by a beguiling cast of cops, criminals and chums, delivering scalding one-liners as she goes. Lots of fun' Sunday Times `If Philip Marlowe and Bernie Gunther had a literary love child, it might just explain Chastity Riley - Simone Buchholz's tough, acerbic, utterly engaging central character' William Ryan `Simone Buchholz writes with real authority and a pungent, noir-is sense of time and space. Blue Night is a palpable hit' Barry Forshaw `A dream of a read for me, relatively short, different, beautifully written, and full of jarring, jolting impact ... one of my books of the year' LoveReading