Set in London in 1968-9, this series featuring Detective Sergeant Cathal Breen and Constable Helen Tozer have been praised by The New York Times as “an elegy for an entire neglected generation”.
BOOK 1: A Song from Dead Lips, published in the US as She’s Leaving Home.
London, October 1968. As Beatles fans encamp outside Abbey Road Studios up the road, the Marylebone CID is as much an old boys’ club as it ever was: comfortably sexist, racially prejudiced and crawling with corruption. And then a body is found…
BOOK 2: A House of Knives, published in the US as The Kings of London
London, November 1968. The decade is drawing its last breath. In Marylebone CID, suspects are beaten in the cells and the only woman is resigning. Detective Sergeant Breen has a death threat in his intray and a mutilated body on his hands.
BOOK 3: A Book of Scars, published in the US as A Song for the Brokenhearted. Chosen as a Sunday Times Crime Book of the Year.
1969. Five years ago, teenager Alexandra Tozer was murdered on her family farm. Her sister Helen Tozer will never forget. Returning home after quitting the Met Police, she brings with her the recovering Detective Sergeant Cathal Breen, who slowly becomes possessed by the unsolved case. He discovers the Tozers were never told the whole truth.
Sympathy For The Devil published in the US as Play With Fire
She made a profit from her youth. She’s not beautiful anymore – but she will be young forever. Called away from his pregnant girlfriend, Detective Sergeant Cathal Breen knows the sight of the murdered prostitute will be with him all his life. But this is what he does: he finds killers. Helen Tozer, more than most, understands why.