The second novel in the Piccadilly Noir series, this dark historical thriller sees Cockney private eye George Harley return to the streets of London’s Soho, populated by gangsters, wide boys and lowlifes, to investigate a missing cabaret dancer and a child believed stole by his nemesis, the child murderer and occultist Professor Morkens. For fans of Dominic Nolan and Laura Shepherd Robinson.
Four years after the capture of child-killer the Nursery Butcher and the brutal murder of his beloved fiancée, Cockney private eye George Harley is finally back in business – operating a detective agency in heart of London’s Soho. And when a distressed father drops in to ask him to look into the disappearance of his daughter, who he believes to have joined a cabaret troupe run by the notorious ‘Queen of Depravity’ Ilse Blau, now in London after being driven out from Weimar-era Berlin, Harley and his new assistant Bunty have their first case.
But in Harley’s liminal world, things are never straightforward, and the detective soon finds himself embroiled in another pitch-dark scenario, with decadent, thrill-seeking aristocrats and politicians on one side and West End wide boys in search of easy cash on the other. And when a six-year-old is stolen from an orphanage, Harley is certain his old nemesis, the child murderer and occultist Professor Osbert Morkens has somehow broken out of the lunatic asylum in which he’s incarcerated and is back in London, up to his old tricks.
Following on from the events of Midnight Streets, this second installment in the Piccadilly Noir series sees George Harley return to the lanes and alleyways of the UK capital in search of answers – no matter how uncomfortable they are. But with a femme fatale shamelessly toying with him, a Glaswegian gangster with the face of Lon Chaney standing in his way and SS agents scouring the clubs of Soho, desperate to find and destroy incriminating pictures of Germany’s new chancellor Adolf Hitler, those answers become increasingly hard to find.