"The many facets of Hamburg’s ambivalent identity, forged over centuries, are on full display in the stories collected in this anthology. Here, we have assembled some of the city’s finest and best-known writers, luminaries in the world of crime fiction and German literature, featuring multiple recipients of the German Crime Fiction Award and the Hubert Fichte Prize, among others. Relative newcomers rub shoulders with established authors, some of whose work now spans decades... The fourteen stories in this collection all look to where good (crime) fiction has always looked: toward lesser-known settings and living situations, repeatedly drawing our attention to lives overlooked, the lost souls and the powerless who have slipped through the cracks of commerce. The perspectives on the metropolis are as diverse as the writers’ backgrounds, resulting in a varied depiction of Hamburg as a colorful hodgepodge of people inhabiting a lively city of millions. Between water and spirits, between power and oblivion, between dream and reality."--