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Readers' rating:
Published Feb 2006
448 pages
Genre: Thrillers
Publication Information
England in 1963 is a country set to explode. The old guard, shocked by the habits of the war baby youth — sex, drugs, and rock and roll — sets out to fight back. The battle moves uncomfortably close to Chief Inspector Troy. While Troy is on medical leave for a nasty case of tuberculosis, the Yard brings charges against an acquaintance of his, a hedonistic doctor with a penchant for voyeurism and uninhibited young women. Two of these women just happen to be sleeping with a senior man at the Foreign Office and 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 backroom deals in the halls of Parliament, not to mention murder. It’s all Troy can do, fighting off some bad habits of his own, to stay afloat in a country immersed in drugs and up to its neck in scandal.
"Weaves the Profumo Affair and the Kim Philby spy scandal into a stylish novel of intrigue and manners spanning the corridors of power and the back alleys of vice, circa 1963." - Booklist.
"New readers who fall under the considerable spell of the indefatigable Troy can seek out earlier adventures, Black Out, Old Flames, Riptide, Flesh Wounds and Bluffing Mr. Churchill." - Publishers Weekly.
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Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
John Lawton is a producer/director in television who has spent much of his time interpreting the USA to the English, and occasionally vice versa. He has worked with Gore Vidal, Neil Simon, Scott Turow, Noam Chomsky, Fay Weldon, Harold Pinter and Kathy Acker. He thinks he may well be the only TV director ever to be named in a Parliamentary Bill in the British House of Lords as an offender against taste and balance – he has also been denounced from the pulpit in Mississippi as a `Communist', but thinks that less remarkable.
He spent most of the 90s in New York – among other things attending the writers' sessions at The Actors' Studio under Norman Mailer – and has visited or worked in more than half the 50 states – since 2000 he has lived in the high, wet ...
... Full Biography
Author Interview
Link to John Lawton's Website
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