Riley receives a letter from a solicitor in Glasgow which has the news that she has been left a property in the will of a great aunt she knows nothing about. Riley heads to Glasgow curious and in search of a means to recover her wellbeing and release the ‘concrete’ inside. Once in Glasgow Riley quickly makes new friends and fits in with drinkers in the East End pubs. In one pub she is introduced to Tom Gomoszynski, an artist who has recently had a stroke. He is instantly besotted by her and eventually produces an old photograph of a woman who looks just like Riley. That woman is Eliza Broome, Riley’s recently deceased great aunt, who was Tom’s lover. Friendship blossoms between them and Tom offers to take Riley to the house so that she can decide whether to accept the bequest. This trip has a profound impact on both of their lives. To borrow from Marks and Spencer, “This is not Pulp Noir, this is Existential Noir.” This really is something different to the usual Noir or crime fiction story. This beautiful novel covers the themes of belonging, personal healing and acceptance with a delicate light touch. The writing is sparse and tight but at the same time manages to convey so much. The chapters are short, one being just one sentence, but the structure works perfectly as the narrative switches between Glasgow and Hamburg, reality and spirituality. The work by the translator is incredible to maintain such brevity.

River Clyde is very different from the other books in Simone Buchholz’s Chastity Riley State Prosecutor thriller series. It is set in two locations, Hamburg and Glasgow. In Hamburg, Chastity’s police colleagues are investigating a major arson attack in the city, but they are all suffering from the fallout of an enforced leave of absence following the death of their friend, Chief Inspector Faller, in the previous book in the series, Hotel Cartagena. Chasity, though, is not with them. She is visiting Glasgow. She received a letter from a lawyer saying she had inherited a property from a long lost aunt. Partly on a journey of self-discovery and partly on a journey of self-pity she heads off from Hamburg to Scotland to see what is on offer. In Glasgow she drinks far too much, is befriended by a couple of people, but is really pretty lost. She encounters a former lover of her aunt and heads out with him to Loch Lomond to inspect the property. Here, perhaps a little weirdly, she has conversations with the ghost of her aunt as she learns more about her and her relationships. It is a very different side to Chastity when compared to what we have encountered in the previous books. And it makes for really interesting reading even if it is not a customary thriller. The River Clyde of the title is a character in the book, commenting on Chastity’s progression around the city. Eventually Chastity decides to stay in the city, but we are left unsure as to how long. The next book in the series, The Acapulco, is in fact a prequel to the other adventures. So we don’t as yet know where Simone will take Chastity as we move forward. Will she stay in Glasgow or will she return to Hamburg? A more than rewarding read but River Clyde is not perhaps for those anticipating a fast moving police thriller.

There's something about a river that just lends itself to introducing a place, don't you think? Or as a character, a situation, a mood? 'the river lies there like over a hundred miles of dead man' writes Buchholtz. Here comes Chastity Riley, sideswiped by grief, loss ('I think about my dead friend, Faller'), PTSD, call it what you will, after the events of Hotel Cartagena, making a very personal journey into the heart of (her own) darkness and also into her - and her family's - past. Buchholz is really bold with this one. It's not a crime story. There's a little bit of a crime thing going on back in Hamburg (more about that in a moment) but it doesn't concern Riley so much as show up the effects of the dreadful blow that the group of friends has suffered. Rather, here, the moodiness, the noiriness, the silent scream which has haunted Riley through all these books, has now fully swallowed her, and it looks as though she's run off. But is she running from - or to? So. Why Scotland? Why Glasgow? Well, it seems Riley's inherited a house from a distant relative, and she's come to take a look and decide what to do with it. But Riley being Riley, nothing is straightforward, so she gets off on a bad footing with the solicitor who's handling the estate, can't find the house and sets to exploring Glasgow's pub scene. She eventually locates the house through a man she meets in a bar, of course - Riley is most enthusiastic in exploring Glasgow's pubs. Indeed the book shows a familiarity with (and love of) the city - and not just its drinking dens - as our heroine orients herself. It's a different Riley we see from when in Hamburg where she's on familiar, if tainted, ground. In Glasgow, she's exploring, evaluating, assembling a relationship with the place. As it is with her, for in this story Buchholz doesn't give us hard-boiled noir: there are sections in the voice of the Clyde himself, responding to Riley. There are time-slips, showing glimpses back into the lives that came before her and indeed condensing into a couple of pages what could form an entire family saga - a story of emigration, loss, disillusion, struggle that tells us a great deal about the woman she is. There are, too, moments that approach the ghost story though whether that is an objectively real ghost or a projection of Riley's tormented memories I really wasn't sure. It's a kind of dark homecoming, Riley finally being forced - by the losses she's been through - do the work, confront the things, we've seen her shutting out all through her Hamburg life. And, yes, we do meet the little circle of friend back there: Stepanovic and Calabretta are investigating a wave of outrageous arson attacks, the café is open for business but there is a hollowness, an uneasiness that was hinted at in earlier books but has now finally blossomed. They discover that they are, in fact standing too close to the Blue Night, which is not 'just any old pub, it's a place of yearning, it's the desire for old times, when everything was broken just enough, so not too much, not ripped to shreds'. Rocco and Carla are sitting at a pavement table facing realities: 'Perhaps Carla's not even this irresistible Venus fly trap but a pub beauty who's no longer in the first flush of youth. Maybe Rocco's not even this audacious survival artist, but a guy with gradually thinning, tousled hair, who's never actually completed a thing'. Similarly, from the moment that Schulle, Brückner, Inceman and Anne Stanislawski are introduced 'lying on a colourful chequered blanket' in a park, we understand that all is not well. Buchholz is excellent at conjuring the spiritual malaise that has fallen on this vivacious, bawdy group of people but she doesn't present to offer answers to it. Perhaps, by the end of the story they're groping out of the dark, or perhaps not. Riley's still missing and her absence counts for a lot... As ever, Rachel Ward's translation is glorious, interacting gleefully with Buchholz's text to give gems such as 'I love it, it's the opposite of innocuous small talk. It's enormous talk, and very nocuous indeed' and conveying the different moods of the various point of view characters - including a river. The result is glorious, haunting, sad, funny and breathtakingly readable. A great addition to the series and - if this is where it ends (I hope it doesn't) - a fitting conclusion

Thank you to the publishers for this early review copy. This is the first time I have read a book by Simone and it definitely wasn't what I was expecting. Gentle style of writing, possibly even filled with warmth & romance which caught be unawares.