Stephen Larkin

A reporter combs London's underworld in search of a missing addict A hard-hitting series of anti-corruption articles and a new girlfriend mean that, for the first time since his wife and child were murdered, investigative reporter Stephen Larkin is happy in Newcastle. It's a shame, then, that his work is about to take him south. A friend of his, police inspector Henry Moir, has lost his youngest daughter, an HIV-positive heroin addict named Karen. Her last known location was London, which Larkin once called home, so Moir asks the reporter to act as tour guide to the capital's hellish underworld.   They travel south together: a man whose life is coming together and one whose life is fraying apart. Karen lies deep within London's shadow world. To find her, they must descend to depths from which good men may never return.

A mining strike wreaks havoc in a small British coal town Today Coldwell is desolate, a crumbling town whose streets are lined with empty shops and populated by ghosts. Two decades ago, the city thrived on the back of a coal industry so powerful that in 1984, the union staged a strike intended to bring Britain to its knees. Instead the government broke the strike-breaking Coldwell along with it.   The effect is seen in five citizens of the town: a heroic footballer, a Dean Martin–obsessed thug, an increasingly desperate striking miner, a crusading journalist, and the reporter's troubled sister. As the story shifts between 1984 and 2001, it becomes clear that what was a political action in the mid-1980s caused permanent changes in the foundation of British life. The bodies buried in 1984 will not stay underground forever.