<div>1969 is a time of turmoil and murder for a New York PI in this &ldquo;twisty, sometimes terrifying&rdquo; novel from the author of the acclaimed Inspector Troy Novels (Kirkus Reviews). New York PI Turner Raines is a has-been&mdash;and the things he has been include a broken civil rights worker, a second-rate lawyer, and a tenth-rate yippie reporter. But in 1969, as the USA is about to land a man on the moon and the Vietnam War is ripping the country to pieces, Raines is working as a skip tracer, making sure draft-dodgers are safe and sound in Canada. When Raines returns from Toronto, he discovers that his oldest friend, a left-wing journalist, has been murdered, and has taken his latest powder keg of a story to his grave. Following the trail of his buddy&rsquo;s death, Turner hits the road for the Texas of his childhood, confronted anew with his divided family, and blown into the dangerous path of a band of brothers from &rsquo;Nam whose secrets could not only change Turner&rsquo;s life but the country itself. &ldquo;Atmospheric . . . absorbingly intelligent.&rdquo; &mdash;Financial Times &ldquo;John Lawton writes great thrillers. . . . He can hold his own with contemporaries Alan Furst and Phillip Kerr.&rdquo; &mdash;Boston Herald</div>

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Sweet Sunday

<div>&ldquo;A stylish spy thriller&rdquo; of postwar Berlin&mdash;the first in a thrilling new series from the acclaimed author of the Inspector Troy Novels (TheNew York Times Book Review). John Wilfrid Holderness&mdash;aka Joe Wilderness&mdash;was a young Cockney cardsharp surviving the London Blitz before he started crisscrossing war-torn Europe as an MI6 agent. With the war over, he&rsquo;s become a &ldquo;free-agent gumshoe&rdquo; weathering Cold War fears and hard-luck times. But now he&rsquo;s being drawn back into the secret ops business when an ex-CIA agent asks him to spearhead one last venture: smuggle a vulnerable woman out of East Berlin. Arriving in Germany, Wilderness soon discovers he&rsquo;s being played as a pawn in a deadly game of atomic proportions. To survive, he must follow a serpentine trail through his own past, into the confidence of an unexpected lover, and go dangerously deep into a black market scam the likes of which Berlin has never seen. The author of the acclaimed Inspector Troy Novels, &ldquo;Lawton&rsquo;s gift for atmosphere, memorable characters and intelligent plotting has been compared to John le Carr&eacute;. . . . Never mind the comparisons&mdash;Lawton can stand up on his own, and Then We Take Berlin is a gem&rdquo; (The Seattle Times). &ldquo;[The Joe Wilderness novels] are meticulously researched, tautly plotted, historical thrillers in the mold of . . . Alan Furst, Phillip Kerr, Eric Ambler, David Downing and Joseph Kanon.&rdquo; &mdash;The Wall Street Journal &ldquo;[It] will thrill readers with an interest in WWII and the early Cold War era.&rdquo; &mdash;Publishers Weekly, starred review &ldquo;A wonderfully complex and nuanced thriller.&rdquo; &mdash;Kirkus Reviews</div>

Then We Take Berlin

<div>A British agent is drawn to Berlin&rsquo;s bridge of spies in this &ldquo;superlative Cold War espionage story&rdquo; from the author of the acclaimed Inspector Troy Novels (The Seattle Times). It&rsquo;s the summer of 1961, and the inscrutable Khrushchev is developing plans for something that could change the course of the Cold War. As he and Kennedy gamble with the fate of millions of lives, Cockney East-Ender-turned-spy Joe Wilderness is thrust into the conflict. Enlisted by MI6 to set up shop in Berlin, Wilderness returns to the city where he spent his postwar years, where a former paramour is under threat, and where the dividing line between the West and the Soviets will soon be crossed. As the Russians start building the wall, two agents find themselves trapped on opposing sides: an unfortunate Englishman in the Lubyanka in Moscow, and a KGB operative in London&rsquo;s Wormwood Scrubs. Now, Wilderness has a new mission: Swap the prisoners on Berlin&rsquo;s bridge of spies. But, as a former black marketer, Wilderness is also working a personal angle&mdash;just to make it interesting, just to make it profitable, just to make it a little more dangerous. What can possibly go wrong? Named by the Daily Telegraph as one of &ldquo;50 Crime Writers to Read before You Die,&rdquo; John Lawton is &ldquo;quite possibly the best historical novelist we have&rdquo; (The Philadelphia Inquirer). &ldquo;[The Joe Wilderness novels] are meticulously researched, tautly plotted, historical thrillers in the mold of . . . Alan Furst, Phillip Kerr, Eric Ambler, David Downing and Joseph Kanon.&rdquo; &mdash;The Wall Street Journal &ldquo;Rich, inventive, surprising, informed, bawdy, cynical, heartbreaking and hilarious. However much you know about postwar Berlin, Lawton will take you deeper into its people, conflicts and courage. . . . Spy fiction at its best.&rdquo; &mdash;The Washington Post</div>

The Unfortunate Englishman

<div>A serial killer stalks post-WWII London in a gritty detective novel featuring Scotland Yard&rsquo;s Inspector Troy. An old flame has returned to Troy&rsquo;s life: Kitty Stilton, wife of an American presidential hopeful. Private eye Joey Rork has been hired to make sure Kitty&rsquo;s amorous liaisons with a rat pack crooner don&rsquo;t ruin her husband&rsquo;s political career. But he also wants to know why Kitty has been spotted with Danny Ryan, whose twin brothers, in addition to owning one of London&rsquo;s hottest jazz clubs, are said to have inherited the crime empire of a fallen mobster. Before Rork can find out, he meets a gruesome end. And he isn&rsquo;t the only one: bodies have started turning up around London, dismembered in the same bizarre and horrifying way. Is it possible that the blood trail leads back to Troy&rsquo;s own police force and into Troy&rsquo;s own forgotten past? Flesh Wounds, a compulsively readable thriller, finds one of our most able storytellers at the height of his game. &ldquo;There are characters based on (or at least inspired by) everyone from Frank Sinatra to Meyer Lansky, enough dismembered bodies to satisfy the most morbid imaginations and frequent flashes of sly wit and social conscience that illuminate a vanished world.&rdquo; &mdash;Publishers Weekly</div>

Flesh Wounds

<div>Inspector Troy of Scotland Yard returns in &ldquo;one of the best thrillers of the year&rdquo; (Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times Book Review). Spanning the tumultuous years 1934 to 1948, John Lawton&rsquo;s A Lily of the Field is a brilliant historical thriller from a master of the form. The book follows two characters&mdash;M&eacute;ret Voytek, a talented young cellist living in Vienna at the novel&rsquo;s start, and Dr. Karel Szabo, a Hungarian physicist interned in a camp on the Isle of Man. In his seventh Inspector Troy novel, Lawton moves seamlessly from Vienna and Auschwitz to the deserts of New Mexico and the rubble-strewn streets of postwar London, following the fascinating parallels of the physicist Szabo and musician Voytek as fate takes each far from home and across the untraditional battlefields of a destructive war to an unexpected intersection at the novel&rsquo;s close. The result, A Lily of the Field, is Lawton&rsquo;s best book yet, a historically accurate and remarkably written novel that explores the diaspora of two Europeans from the rise of Hitler to the post-atomic age. &ldquo;Lawton&rsquo;s thrillers provide a vivid, moving and wonderfully absorbing way to experience life in London and on the Continent before, during and after World War II.&rdquo; &mdash;The Washington Post </div>

A Lily of the Field

<div>John Lawton&rsquo;s debut novel: a stunning, WWII thriller introducing Scotland Yard Detective Sergeant Troy. &ldquo;A delightful, intelligent, involving book&rdquo; (Scott Turow). The first of the Inspector Troy novels, Black Out singularly captures the realities of wartime London, weaving them into a riveting drama that encapsulates the uncertainty of Europe at the dawn of the postwar era. London, 1944. While the Luftwaffe makes its final assault on the already battered British capital, Londoners rush through the streets, seeking underground shelter in the midst of the city&rsquo;s black out. When the panic subsides, other things begin to surface along with London&rsquo;s war-worn citizens . . . A severed arm is discovered by a group of children playing at an East End bomb site, and when Scotland Yard&rsquo;s Det. Sgt. Frederick Troy arrives at the scene, it becomes apparent that the dismembered body is not the work of a V-1 rocket. After Troy manages to link the severed arm to the disappearance of a refugee scientist from Nazi Germany, America&rsquo;s newest intelligence agency, the OSS, decides to get involved. The son of a titled Russian &eacute;migr&eacute;, Troy is forced to leave the London he knows and enter a corrupt world of bloody consequences, stateless refugees, and mysterious women as he unearths a chain of secrets leading straight to the Allied high command. &ldquo;An exciting, fast-moving mystery set against the backdrop of the London blitz in 1944.&rdquo; &mdash;Booklis</div>

Black Out

<div>Scotland Yard&rsquo;s Sergeant Troy returns in a WWII thriller praised as an absorbing blend of espionage and detection&rdquo; (The Denver Post). It is 1941. Wolfgang Stahl, an American spy operating undercover as an SS officer, has just fled Germany with Hitler&rsquo;s henchmen on his trail. Stahl&rsquo;s man in the American embassy, the shy and sheltered Calvin M. Cormack, is teamed with a boisterous MI5 officer, Walter Stilton, to find the spy and bring him to safety. Their investigation takes them across war-torn London, and in Cormack&rsquo;s case, into the arms of Kitty, his partner&rsquo;s rambunctious daughter. As Cormack and Stilton close in on Stahl, bodies begin turning up&mdash;and the duo realize they may not be the only ones in pursuit of the spy. When his partner is suddenly murdered, Cormack must turn to the ingenious devices of his lover Kitty&rsquo;s old flame&mdash;Sergeant Troy of Scotland Yard. Together, they investigate the trail of murders and come to a horrifying realization: Cormack and his spy are being played by one of their own in the American embassy. &ldquo;The blend of Lawton&rsquo;s fictional creations with real characters like Churchill . . . produces a rich and juicy montage that throbs with life.&rdquo; &mdash;Dick Adler, Chicago Tribune </div>

Bluffing Mr. Churchill

<div>Scotland Yard&rsquo;s Inspector Troy returns in a Cold War spy thriller hailed as &ldquo;stylish, sophisticated, suspenseful . . . A fictional tour de force&rdquo; (Patrick Anderson, The Washington Post). In April 1956, at the height of the Cold War, Khrushchev and Bulganin, leaders of the Soviet Union, are in Britain on an official visit. Chief Inspector Troy of Scotland Yard is assigned to be Khrushchev&rsquo;s bodyguard and to spy on him. Soon after, a Royal Navy diver is found dead and mutilated beyond recognition in Portsmouth Harbor. Troy embarks on an investigation that takes him to the rotten heart of MI6, to the distant days of his childhood, and into the dangerous arms of an old flame. &ldquo;If Troy is the character at the heart of this novel, its soul is England as it was during the Cold War years, a country fueled by paranoia and espionage, overrun with agents and counter-agents, caught up, as Troy says, in &lsquo;an age that specialized in thinking the unthinkable.&rsquo;&rdquo; &mdash;Anne Stephenson, USA Today</div>

Old Flames

<div>As London braces for WWII, a string of murdered rabbis draws Inspector Troy into a mystery that &ldquo;sets pulses racing and the jaded responses tingling&rdquo; (The Irish Times). One of today&rsquo;s top historical espionage writers, considered &ldquo;as good as Le Carr&eacute;&rdquo; (Chicago Tribune) and &ldquo;a master,&rdquo; John Lawton adds another spellbinding thriller to his Inspector Troy series with Second Violin (Rocky Mountain News). The sixth installment in the series, Lawton&rsquo;s new novel opens in 1938 with Europe on the brink of war. In London, Frederick Troy, newly promoted to the prestigious murder squad at Scotland Yard, is put in charge of rounding up a list of German and Italian &ldquo;enemy aliens&rdquo; that also includes his brother, Rod, who learns upon receiving an internment letter that he was born in Austria despite having grown up in England. Hundreds of men are herded by train to a neglected camp on the Isle of Man. And as the bombs start falling on London, a murdered rabbi is found, then another, and another . . . Amid great war, murder is what matters. Moving from the Nazi-infested alleys of prewar Vienna to the bombed-out streets of 1940 London, and featuring an extraordinary cast of characters, Lawton&rsquo;s thriller is a suspenseful and intelligent novel, as good a spy story as it is an historical narrative. &ldquo;Smart and gracefully written.&rdquo; &mdash;Patrick Anderson, The Washington Post</div>

Second Violin

<div>&ldquo;[Lawton&rsquo;s] work stands head and shoulders above most other contemporary thrillers, earning those comparisons to Le Carr&eacute;.&rdquo; &mdash;The Boston Globe The latest novel from the master spy novelist John Lawton follows Inspector Troy, now Scotland Yard&rsquo;s chief detective, deep into a scandal reminiscent of the infamous Profumo affair. England in 1963 is a country set to explode. The old guard, shocked by the habits of the war baby youth, sets out to fight back. The battle reaches uncomfortably close to Troy. 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 which 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. It&rsquo;s all Troy can do to stay afloat in a country immersed in drugs and up to its neck in scandal. &ldquo;John Lawton is so captivating a storyteller that I&rsquo;d happily hear him out on any subject.&rdquo; &mdash;Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times Book Review</div>

A Little White Death

<div>British agent Joe Wilderness returns in &ldquo;Lawton&rsquo;s ongoing recreation of Cold War chicanery . . . one of the great pleasures of modern spy fiction&rdquo; (Mick Herron, award-winning author of the Slough House series). It&rsquo;s London, the swinging sixties, and by all rights, MI6 spy Joe Wilderness should be having as good a time as James Bond. But alas, his postings are more grim than glamorous. In the wake of an embarrassing disaster for MI6 in a divided Berlin, Wilderness is reprimanded with a posting to remote northern Finland under the guise of a cultural exchange program to promote Britain abroad. Bored by his work, with nothing to spy on, Wilderness strikes a deal with his old KGB pal Kostya to smuggle vodka into the USSR. But there is something fishy about why Kostya has suddenly turned up in Finland&mdash;and MI6 intelligence from London points to a connection with cobalt mining in the region, a critical component in the casing of the atomic bomb. Wilderness&rsquo;s posting is getting more interesting by the minute, but more dangerous too. Moving from the no-man&rsquo;s-land of Cold War Finland to the wild days of the Prague Spring, and populated by old friends&mdash;including Inspector Troy&mdash;and old enemies alike, Hammer to Fall is a gripping tale of deception and skullduggery, of art and politics&mdash;a page-turning story of the always-riveting life of the British spy. &ldquo;Lawton scores another hit.&rdquo; &mdash;Publishers Weekly (starred review) &ldquo;A jaw-dropping finale that will leave readers palpitating for more.&rdquo; &mdash;Booklist (starred review) &ldquo;A terrific thriller: fun, satisfying, and humane.&rdquo;&mdash;Kirkus Reviews (starred review)</div>

Hammer to Fall

<div>Inspector Troy of Scotland Yard stars in thriller that&rsquo;s &ldquo;part murder mystery, part spy tale . . . a wickedly seductive entertainment&rdquo; (TheWashington Post). London, 1958. Chief Superintendent Frederick Troy of Scotland Yard, newly promoted after good service during Nikita Khrushchev&rsquo;s visit to Britain, is not looking forward to a European trip with his older brother, Rod. Rod has decided to take his entire family on &ldquo;the Grand Tour&rdquo; for his fifty-first birthday: a whirlwind of restaurants, galleries, and concert halls from Paris to Florence to Vienna to Amsterdam. But Frederick Troy only gets as far as Vienna. It is there that he crosses paths with an old acquaintance, a man who always seems to be followed by trouble: British-spy-turned-Soviet-agent Guy Burgess. Suffice it to say that Troy is more than surprised when Burgess, who has escaped from the bosom of Moscow for a quick visit to Vienna, tells him something extraordinary: &ldquo;I want to come home.&rdquo; Troy knows this news will cause a ruckus in London&mdash;but even Troy doesn&rsquo;t expect an MI5 man to be gunned down as a result, with Troy himself suspected of doing the deed . . . &ldquo;An artful blend of two ever-popular subjects: espionage and British police work.&rdquo; &mdash;The Seattle Times &ldquo;The surprises keep coming, not merely up to the last chapter but even to the novel&rsquo;s very last line.&rdquo; &mdash;Pittsburgh Post-Gazette &ldquo;Lawton&rsquo;s superb eighth Inspector Troy novel . . . [a] smart, fascinating historical thriller.&rdquo; &mdash;Publishers Weekly (starred review) &ldquo;A beguiling interpretation of [Guy] Burgess&rsquo; life both before and after his defection in 1951.&rdquo; &mdash;Booklist (starred review)</div>

John Lawton
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Books By John Lawton (12 Books)