Ice on the Bridge By Erich Wolfgang Skwara, Translated by Michael Roloff

The Austrian architect, Sebastian Winter, flies to San Diego from Vienna to attend a conference, filled with apprehension about returning to the city where he had once lived, until the love of his life, Claudia, without warning, stepped out of their car and out of his life, never to return.
At the final banquet he gets drunk and in driving home kills a pedestrian and is arrested. While in jail awaiting bail from Vienna, he relives the past that has led up to this point in his life. The aesthete who had always considered himself superior to others and in control of his life has learned by being thrust into reality that he too is vulnerable.