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John Lawton

Written by 'a sublimely elegant historical novelist as addictive as crack' - Daily Telegraph
The first book in John Lawton's Inspector Troy series, selected by Time magazine as one of 'Six Detective Series to Savour' alongside Michael Connelly and Donna Leon.

The Blitz, London, 1944.

As the Luftwaffe make their last desperate assault on the city, Londoners take to the shelters once again and eagerly await the signal for D-Day. In the East End children lead police to a charred, dismembered corpse buried in a bombsite. The victim is German and it soon becomes clear that this is no ordinary murder.

For Russian emigré Detective-Sergeant Troy it is the start of a manhunt which will lead him into a world of military intelligence and corruption in high places; a manhunt in which Troy is both the hunter and the hunted.

Grove Press UK

Inspector Troy series

Black Out

Written by 'a sublimely elegant historical novelist as addictive as crack'- Daily Telegraph
The Inspector Troy series is perfect for fans of Le Carré, Philip Kerr and Alan Furst.

London, 1956.

Khrushchev and Bulganin, leaders of the Soviet Union, are in Britain on an official visit. Chief Inspector Troy is assigned to be Khrushchev's bodyguard and to spy on him. Soon after, a Royal Navy diver is found dead and mutilated beyond recognition in Portsmouth Harbour. What was he doing under the hull of Khrushchev's ship, and who sent him there?

Meanwhile, cold-blooded killings have started to follow Troy wherever he goes. Is it possible that the executioner is a fellow policeman, or, worse still, an old friend?

Old Flames

Written by 'a sublimely elegant historical novelist as addictive as crack' (Daily Telegraph), the Inspector Troy series is perfect for fans of Le Carré, Philip Kerr and Alan Furst.

1963.

England is a country set to explode but Troy, now Britain's most senior police detective, is fighting his own battle against ill-health. While he is on medical leave, the Yard brings charges against an acquaintance of his, a hedonistic doctor with a penchant for voyeurism and young women, two of whom just happen to be sleeping with a senior man at the Foreign Office as well as a KGB agent.

But on the eve of the verdict a curious double case of suicide drags Troy back into active duty. Beyond bedroom acrobatics, the secret affairs now stretch to double crosses and deals in the halls of power, not to mention murder.

A Little White Death

Written by 'a sublimely elegant historical novelist as addictive as crack' (Daily Telegraph)
The Inspector Troy series is perfect for fans of Le Carré, Philip Kerr and Alan Furst.

1941.

After ten years spying for the Americans, Wolfgang Stahl disappears during a Berlin air raid. The Germans think he's dead. The British know he's not. But where is he?

MI6 convince US Intelligence that Stahl will head for London, and so Captain Cal Cormack, a shy American 'aristocrat', is teamed with Chief Inspector Stilton of Stepney, fat, fifty and convivial. Between them they scour London, a city awash with spivs and refugees.

When things start to go terribly wrong, ditched by MI6 and disowned by his embassy, Cal is introduced to his one last hope - Sergeant Troy of Scotland Yard...

Riptide

Written by 'a sublimely elegant historical novelist as addictive as crack' (Daily Telegraph), the Inspector Troy series is perfect for fans of Le Carré, Philip Kerr and Alan Furst.

1959.

An old flame has returned to Troy's life: Kitty Stilton, now wife of an American presidential hopeful, has come back to London, and with her, an unwelcome guest.

Private eye Joey Rork has been hired to make sure Kitty's amorous liaisons don't ruin her husband's political career. But before Rork can dig any dirt, he meets a gruesome end...

But he isn't the only one, and with the body-count mounting is it possible that the blood trail leads back to Troy's police force and into his own forgotten past?

Blue Rondo

Written by 'a sublimely elegant historical novelist as addictive as crack' (Daily Telegraph), the Inspector Troy series is perfect for fans of Le Carré, Philip Kerr and Alan Furst.

1938.

The Germans take Vienna without a shot being fired. Covering Austria for the English press is a young journalist named Rod Troy. Back home his younger brother joins the CID as a detective constable.

Two years later tensions are rising and 'enemy aliens' are rounded up in London for internment. In the midst of the chaos London's most prominent rabbis are being picked off one by one and Troy must race to stop the killer.

Second Violin

Written by 'a sublimely elegant historical novelist as addictive as crack' (Daily Telegraph), the Inspector Troy series is perfect for fans of Le Carré, Philip Kerr and Alan Furst.

Vienna, 1934. Ten-year-old cello prodigy Meret Voytek becomes a pupil of concert pianist Viktor Rosen, a Jew in exile from Germany.

The Isle of Man, 1940. An interned Hungarian physicist is recruited for the Manhattan Project in Los Alomos, building the atom bomb for the Americans.

Auschwitz, 1944. Meret is imprisoned but is saved from certain death to play the cello in the camp orchestra. She is playing for her life.

London, 1948. Viktor Rosen wants to relinquish his Communist Party membership after thirty years. His comrade and friend reminds him that he committed for life...

These seemingly unconnected strands all collide forcefully with a brazen murder on a London Underground platform, revealing an intricate web of secrecy and deception which Detective Frederick Troy must untangle.

A Lily of the Field

A newest novel in the Inspector Troy series, a tale of Cold War spy dealings centred around Guy Burgess. For readers of John le Carré, Philip Kerr and Alan Furst.
It is 1958. Chief Superintendent Frederick Troy of Scotland Yard, newly promoted after good service during Nikita Khrushchev's visit to Britain, is not looking forward to a Continental trip with his older brother, Rod. Rod was too vain to celebrate being fifty so instead takes his entire family on 'the Grand Tour' for his fifty-first birthday: Paris, Siena, Florence, Vienna, Amsterdam. Restaurants, galleries and concert halls. But Frederick Troy never gets to Amsterdam.

After a concert in Vienna he is approached by an old friend whom he has not seen for years - Guy Burgess, a spy for the Soviets, who says something extraordinary: 'I want to come home.' Troy dumps the problem on MI5 who send an agent to debrief Burgess - but when the man is gunned down only yards from the embassy, the whole plan unravels with alarming speed and Troy finds himself a suspect.
As he fights to prove his innocence, Troy discovers that Burgess is not the only ghost who has returned to haunt him...