Review: River Clyde, by Simone Buchholz

Blurb

Mired in grief after tragic recent events, State prosecutor Chastity Riley
escapes to Scotland, lured to the birthplace of her great-great-grandfather by a mysterious letter suggesting she has inherited a house.

In Glasgow, she meets Tom, the ex-lover of Chastity’s great aunt, who
holds the keys to her own family secrets – painful stories of unexpected
cruelty and loss that she’s never dared to confront.

In Hamburg, Stepanovic and Calabretta investigate a major arson
attack, while a group of property investors kicks off an explosion of
violence that threatens everyone.

As events in these two countries collide, Chastity prepares to face the
inevitable, battling the ghosts of her past and the lost souls that could
be her future and, perhaps, finally finding redemption for them all.

Nail-bitingly tense and breathtakingly emotive, River Clyde is both an
electrifying thriller and a poignant, powerful story of damage and hope,
and one woman’s fight for survival.

My Review

Thanks to Anne and Karen at Orenda books for arranging this blog tour and sending me a copy of this book.

Chas and the gang are grief-stricken after events in Hotel Cartagena. A letter arrives out of the blue, informing Chas that she has inherited a house from an unknown great aunt. Chas leaves her friends behind and heads to Glasgow. In Glasgow she drinks a lot of alcohol, makes new friends and meets her great aunt’s ex. They go to the house, and after some odd experiences, Chas makes some decisions.

It doesn’t sound like much, but the style of writing, the utter grief and confusion of the characters is soaked into the story. Events are hazy and dreamlike, making the bits with talking stags, ghosts and the river seem entirely normal.

Simone has once again broken me. I’m crying. I meant to just get a few pages read while I was waiting for something, but resurfaced two hours later, bawling my eyes out and having finished the book. The translator has done a wonderful job.

The reader learns more about why Chas Riley is so broken, and about her friends in Hamburg as they all wrestle in their own ways with the explosion that was the death of Faller. When Chas goes to Glasgow they feel betrayed and unstuck, but find ways to stick themselves back together, building new lives. There’s a crime too. But it’s just background, a real explosion and waiting period, to mirror their internal experiences. It’s messy and painful, and there’s hope. Like life.

The descriptions of the characters’ internal struggling and the external landscape is devastatingly evocative. I’ve never been to Glasgow or Hamburg but they both feel very familiar after reading this novel.

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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. The critically acclaimed Beton Rouge, Mexico Street and Hotel
Cartagena all followed in the Chastity Riley series, with River Clyde in 2022. She lives in Sankt Pauli, in the heart of Hamburg, with her husband and son.