Inspector Troy

John Lawton's debut novel – first published by Viking in 1995, and now being reissued by Grove Press – is a stunning, war-time thriller that cements his place among the greatest crime writers of our era. 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's black out. When the panic subsides, other things begin to surface along with London'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's Detective Sergeant 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 form Nazi Germany, America's newest intelligence agency, the OSS, decides to get involved. The son of a titled Russian émigré, 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.

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'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. Brilliantly evoking the intrigue of the Cold War and 1950's London, Old Flames is a thrilling adventure of intrigue and suspense.

The latest novel from the master spy novelist John Lawton follows Inspector Troy, now Scotland Yard'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 whom 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's all Troy can do to stay afloat in a country immersed in drugs, up to its neck in scandal.

With his Inspector Troy series, John Lawton has been compared to top historical espionage writers such as John le Carre and Len Deighton. Brilliantly re-creating London in the time of ration tickets and bread lines, Bluffing Mr. Churchill is a blistering page-turner. It is 1941. Wolfgang Stahl, an American spy operating undercover as an SS officer, has just fled Germany with Hitler's henchmen on his trail. Stahl'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's case, into the arms of Kitty, his partner's rambunctious daughter. As Cormack and Stilton close in on Stahl, bodies begin turning up - 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's old flame - Sergeant Troy of Scotland Yard. Together, they investigate the trail of murders and come to a horrifying realization - are Cormack and his spy being played by one of their own in the American embassy?

Praised for their riveting, ingenious plot twists, John Lawton's series of espionage thrillers featuring Chief Inspector Frederick Troy of Scotland Yard have an uncanny ability to place readers in the thick of history. Now in Flesh Wounds, an old flame has returned to Troy's life: Kitty Stilton, wife of an American presidential hopeful. Private eye Joey Rork has been hired to make sure Kitty's amorous liaisons with a rat pack crooner don't ruin her husband'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's hottest jazz clubs, are said to have inherited the crime empire of fallen mobster Alf Marx. Before Rork can find out, he meets a gruesome end. And he isn'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's own police force and into Troy's own forgotten past? Flesh Wounds, a compulsively readable thriller, finds one of our most able storytellers at the height of his game.

One of today's top historical espionage writers, John Lawton, adds another spellbinding thriller to his Inspector Troy series with Second Violin. The sixth installment in the series, Lawton'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 "enemy aliens" that also includes Frederick's 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's latest thriller is a suspenseful and intelligent novel, as good a spy story as it is an historical narrative.

Inspector Troy of Scotland Yard stars in thriller that's "part murder mystery, part spy tale ... a wickedly seductive entertainment" (TheWashington Post). London, 1958. Chief Superintendent Frederick Troy of Scotland Yard, newly promoted after good service during Nikita Khrushchev'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 "the Grand Tour" 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: "I want to come home." Troy knows this news will cause a ruckus in London-but even Troy doesn't expect an MI5 man to be gunned down as a result, with Troy himself suspected of doing the deed ...

From "one of the best authors of espionage fiction" (Wall Street Journal), a book of deception and money to be made amid the rubble of World War II From an author whose books have been described as "one of the great pleasures of modern spy fiction" by Slow Horses author Mick Herron and compared to the works of Alan Furst, Phillip Kerr, and Joseph Kanon, in Smoke and Embers John Lawton turns to the murky days, weeks and years following the end of World War II in Germany, Britain, and beyond. Smoke and Embers is the ninth installment of the beloved Inspector Troy series, and opens in 1950, when Scotland Yard Chief Inspector Troy learns that his sergeant has been conducting an affair with the known mistress of infamous London racketeer Otto Ohnherz. Troy is immediately intrigued by the mysterious origins of Ohnherz's second-in-command, Jay Fabian, who is a major contributor to all three British political parties and claims to have survived the concentration camps-yet he lacks proof beyond his word. So begins a novel of duplicity and reinvention in the aftermath of World War II and the Holocaust, with each chapter adding a new layer of intrigue. With a twisting plotline, crackling dialogue, characteristic humor, and the return of beloved characters, Smoke and Embers is an exciting new addition to John Lawton's masterful canon.