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 Krimi ZEIT Best of Crime List for months. The critically acclaimed Beton Rouge, Mexico Street, Hotel Cartagena and River Clyde all followed in the Chastity Riley series. Hotel Cartagena won the CWA Crime in Translation Dagger in 2022. The Acapulco (2023) marked the beginning of the Chastity Reloaded series, with The Kitchen out in 2024. She lives in Sankt Pauli, in the heart of Hamburg, with her husband and son. Rachel Ward is a freelance translator of literary and creative texts from German and French to English. Having always been an avid reader and enjoyed word games and puzzles, she discovered a flair for languages at school and went on to study modern languages at the University of East Anglia. She spent the third year working as a language assistant at two grammar schools in Saaebrücken, Germany. During her final year, she realised that she wanted to put these skills and passions to use professionally and applied for UEA’s MA in Literary Translation, which she completed in 2002. Her published translations include Traitor by Gudrun Pausewang and Red Rage by Brigitte Blobel, and she is a Member of the Institute of Translation and Interpreting. Follow Rachel on Twitter @FwdTranslations, on her blog www.adiscounttickettoeverywhere.wordpress.com and on her website www.forwardtranslations.co.uk

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

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 Krimi ZEIT Best of Crime List for months. The critically acclaimed Beton Rouge, Mexico Street, Hotel Cartagena and River Clyde all followed in the Chastity Riley series. Hotel Cartagena won the CWA Crime in Translation Dagger in 2022. The Acapulco (2023) marked the beginning of the Chastity Reloaded series, with The Kitchen out in 2024. She lives in Sankt Pauli, in the heart of Hamburg, with her husband and son. Rachel Ward is a freelance translator of literary and creative texts from German and French to English. Having always been an avid reader and enjoyed word games and puzzles, she discovered a flair for languages at school and went on to study modern languages at the University of East Anglia. She spent the third year working as a language assistant at two grammar schools in Saaebrücken, Germany. During her final year, she realised that she wanted to put these skills and passions to use professionally and applied for UEA’s MA in Literary Translation, which she completed in 2002. Her published translations include Traitor by Gudrun Pausewang and Red Rage by Brigitte Blobel, and she is a Member of the Institute of Translation and Interpreting. Follow Rachel on Twitter @FwdTranslations, on her blog www.adiscounttickettoeverywhere.wordpress.com and on her website www.forwardtranslations.co.uk

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