On enforced leave in wintry St Pauli, Hamburg State Prosecutor Chastity Riley finds a barefoot homeless man beaten almost to death. When another victim appears and two teenagers vanish, she suspects the cases are connected - and the violence is only beginning... NEXT in Simone Buchholz's addictive, award-winning series...

'As much a character study as the story of a crime ... like a flipbook, full of startling images and sudden movements, that will thrill cynics and romantics alike' Sunday Times

'For the first time in a long time, I found a book I simply couldn't put down' Leye Adenle

'Chastity Riley is the perfect anti-hero for our times, and Simone Buchholz is the real deal' Rod Reynolds

`Such a revelation¿ Laura Lippman

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It's nearly Christmas in St Pauli, and Hamburg State Prosecutor Chastity Riley has been ordered to take time off, whether she likes it or not. Football is on winter break, the days are empty, and walking is better than drinking before lunch.

Then, outside a second-hand shop in the Karoviertel, she comes across a man with no shoes, no shelter and practically no pulse. His face has been smashed.

The police show little interest in the assault on a homeless man, but Chastity cannot make sense of the missing shoes. When another victim is found on the streets and two teenagers go missing, her instincts tell her the attacks and disappearances are part of the same brutal pattern.

Then her mother turns up on her doorstep: the woman who left when Chastity was three.

Still on leave, Chastity follows the link between two men left for dead and two missing teenagers. If she is right, this is not random violence. And if she is right, the first bodies are only the beginning...