Fritz Honka, nicknamed the butcher, represented horror and nightmare for Hamburg residents in the 1970s. A killer of women from the lowest social strata. A person mentally and physically scarred by his horrific youth full of violence and abuse, he chose his victims in the notoriously infamous pub U Zlaté rukavice in Kiez, a city district slated for demolition, where the residents faced a life that stripped them of all humanity. The author, with narrative obsession, historical precision, and incredible compassion, reconstructs a series of crimes in which not only the perpetrator was notoriously known to justice, but all his unfortunate victims as well. Simultaneously, he takes us to the higher echelons of society, to a Hanseatic shipping dynasty based in a suburb on the Elbe, where money reigns, but humanity does not. In the end, the poor and the rich meet in Hamburg's underworld, in a 24-hour open bar on Hamburger Berg, amidst alcohol, sex, misery, and crime, where everyone, until their last breath, longs for happiness.
