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'Like a darker, grimier version of Mick Herron's Slough House novels, this is a highly promising debut.' Mail on Sunday 'Mesmerising'. The Financial Times A senior civil servant dies in suspicious circumstances. A sensitive file in his possession and evidence of contact with a human rights lawyer lead the authorities to believe he is a whistle-blower. This needs a police officer used to operating in the murky world between policing and intelligence. DS Mark (Max) Lomax is a former Special Demonstration Squad officer – a Special Branch unit dedicated to infiltrating political and extremist groups, a world he thinks he has left far behind. Following a botched stakeout of a north London gangster, he finds himself on enforced leave and is called back into his old world of half-truths and conflicting agendas. As he digs into the death of the civil servant, Max is obstructed at every turn, forcing him to turn to the people he once betrayed for help. With political reputations on the line, the case becomes less about uncovering the truth, than burying it for good.
The story of Ted Lewis carries historical and cultural resonances for our own troubled times Ted Lewis is one of the most important writers you've never heard of. Born in Manchester in 1940, he grew up in the tough environs of post-war Humberside, attending Hull College of Arts and Crafts before heading for London. His life described a cycle of obscurity to glamour and back to obscurity, followed by death at only 42. He sampled the bright temptations of sixties London while working in advertising, TV and films and he encountered excitement and danger in Soho drinking dens, rubbing shoulders with the 'East End boys' in gangland haunts. He wrote for Z Cars and had some nine books published. Alas, unable to repeat the commercial success of Get Carter, Lewis's life fell apart, his marriage ended and he returned to Humberside and an all too early demise. Getting Carter is a meticulously researched and riveting account of the career of a doomed genius. Long-time admirer Nick Triplow has fashioned a thorough, sympathetic and unsparing narrative. Required reading for noirists, this book will enthral and move anyone who finds irresistible the old cocktail of rags to riches to rags.
Nick Triplow’s soulful biography of enigmatic British crime fiction pioneer, Ted Lewis (author of Get Carter), is one of those rare works of literary investigation that relentlessly asserts its own status as art. Like Philip Hoare’s Melville in The Whale or James Sallis’ Chester Himes: A Life, Triplow more than uncovers the forgotten godfather of the modern British crime story; he also spins a noir morality tale with a poetry all its own. Mike Hodges’ 1971 cinema classic was based on a book called Jack’s Return Home, and many commentators agree contemporary British crime writing began with that novel. The influence of both book and film is strong to this day. Lewis never lived to r...
Frank s Wild Years - betrayal and last chances at the frayed and fading edges of the south London underworld. IN THE TWILIGHT days between Christmas and New Year, Frank Neaves is about to drink away his last tenner in a Deptford boozer. A former friend and associate of long-dead local villain Dave Price, Frank s scotch-soaked meditation is interrupted when Carl, Price s son and the pub s landlord, disappears leaving an oblique one line note for barmaid, Adeline. Carl has set his heart on bringing his young daughter home for New Year s Eve. An undertaking that puts him on a collision course with his ex-wife s new man, a Hull-based hard case called O Keefe. Desperate to avoid a violent confrontation that Carl can t win, Adeline persuades Frank to join her. They take a slow train for Humberside. And with the year grinding towards its close, Frank s former life comes back to haunt him in a way he could never have imagined... "
Career campaigner Fraser Neal continually clashed with local businessmen, most recently over the council's selling publicly-owned social housing in the Docklands to private developers and displacing vulnerable residents. Until he's found dead in an alley behind Tennessee Fried Chicken's wheelie bins. Neal was also a police informant – or so he said. DS Max Lomax of Special Operations says he wasn't. No one believes him. Max's reluctant inquiries into Fraser's murder take him through the rundown estates, church soup kitchens and graffitied shopfronts of southeast London. He's unaware that his investigation is linked to Johnny Nunn, a former boxer living on the streets, who has given everything to the search for his missing daughter. For five years Johnny has been consumed by a vision of finding his girl and bringing her home, but now he allows himself to be drawn into another family's tragedy. Johnny knows the only beaten man is the one who's stopped fighting. The killers may not.
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'Ted Lewis is one of England's finest, but still most neglected post-war writers' Two men share a common history. Growing up together in the small town of Barton-Upon-Humber in Lincolnshire, England, Peter Knott is everything that Brian Plender wishes he were. Knott is suave, good-looking, an exemplary student and popular. The friendship they maintain is as important to Plender as it is forgettable to Knott, and eventually leads to a lasting humiliation for Brian. Years later Brian Plender is a dangerous man; a private investigator who specializes in extortion, blackmail, and intimidation. Knott meanwhile is a family man adrift, beholden to his wife for money. When, at a bar he uses to set up marks, Plender spots Knott with a girl way too young to be his wife he decides to follow the pair and see what happens. What follows is an edge-of-your-seat trip into a nightmare story that manages to be both incredibly creepy and eerily profound.
Lightlines charts an investigation of quotidian space as a site of inter- and intra-subjective potential, considering the physical and psychological tensions of person and environment using artistic perspectives.
The First DS Ian Peterson Murder Investigation When Henry's wife is stabbed to death, he pays a prostitute to give him an alibi. Her body is discovered, strangled, and the police realise they are dealing with a serial killer who will stop at nothing to cover his tracks. While they are hunting for evidence, another prostitute is brutally murdered. On the track of a vicious killer, Ian doesn't realise he is risking the life of his young colleague, Polly. Already established as a popular character in his own right, Ian Peterson appears in a supporting role in the first three Geraldine Steel novels. Cold Sacrifice is the start of his own career as protagonist in a brand new detective series.