Ex-Metropolitan Police Officer Jack Kiley spent his career discerning fact from fiction. Now a private detective, Kiley has agreed to investigate the provenance of a newly discovered manuscript. Lost for decades, Dead Dames Don't Sing is typical pulp fodder: 'Hard, fast, and deadly,' according to Daniel Pike, the rare book dealer who hires Kiley. What makes it unusual – and potentially valuable – is that the novel appears to have been written by the late poet William Pierce before he made a name for himself.

Pierce's bewitching socialite-cum-model daughter, Alexandra, insists that it's genuine, but Kiley isn't so sure. Something doesn't feel right, but the deeper he digs, the more he wonders if poetry and pulp really are such strange bedfellows.

Hailed as 'one of our most accomplished writers' by the Daily Telegraph, John Harvey brings swinging London – both past and present – to life in this gripping novella.