Black Out

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.



John Lawton worked for Channel 4 for many years, and, among many others, produced Harold Pinter's 'O Superman', the least-watched most-argued-over programme of the 90s. He has written seven novels in his Troy series, two Joe Wilderness novels, the standalone Sweet Sunday, a couple of short stories and the occasional essay. He writes very slowly and almost entirely on the hoof in the USA or Italy, but professes to be a resident of a tiny village in the Derbyshire Peak District. He admires the work of Barbara Gowdy, TC Boyle, Oliver Bleeck, Franz Schubert and Clara Schumann - and is passionate about the playing of Maria Joao Pires. He has no known hobbies, belongs to no organisations and hates being photographed.



Wonderfully captures the atmosphere of wartime London... original and entertaining.



This fine novel repeatedly brings to mind le Carré - for its elegance and style, its intricate suspenseful plot, [and] its intimate knowledge of a seemingly shattered time and place... A delightful, intelligent, involving book.