Inspector Troy Series by John Lawton

In the tradition of John le Carré, Eric Ambler, and more recently, Joseph Kanon, Black Out is a stunning wartime thriller. As the Luftwaffe makes its last, desperate assaults on the battered city in 1944, Londoners take to the underground shelters amidst the black out. Detective-Sergeant Troy starts with the clue of a neatly dismembered corpse leading him into a world of stateless refugees, military intelligence, and corruption all the way to the top of Allied High Command.

Brilliantly evoking the intrigue of the Cold War and 1950s London, John Lawtons thrilling sequel to Black Out takes Inspector Troy deep into the rotten heart of MI6, the distant days of his childhood, and the dangerous arms of an old flame: Larissa Tosca, late of the U.S. Army, later still of the KGB... moreBrilliantly evoking the intrigue of the Cold War and 1950s London, John Lawtons thrilling sequel to Black Out takes Inspector Troy deep into the rotten heart of MI6, the distant days of his childhood, and the dangerous arms of an old flame: Larissa Tosca, late of the U.S. Army, later still of the KGB. It is April 1956, and an official visit to Britain by Soviet leaders Khrushchev and Bulganin is unexpectedly interrupted when a mutilated body is found under the hull of Khrushchevs ship in Portsmouth Harbor. Is the dead man a Royal Navy diver or the corpse of Arnold Cockerell, a furniture salesman with a mysterious source of income? As the mystery deepens, the inexplicable murders continue, leading Troy to an unforgettable discovery. less