Blue Rondo - Tapa blanda

London in the late 1950s. The East End is ripe for redevelopment; the property sharks are buying up the bombsites and Victorian terraces; corruption is rife; Macmillan is PM of a shaky Tory government; Gaitskell expects to succeed as the first Labour PM for almost a decade to the delight of Troy's brothers, one an MP, the other a Fleet Street editor. Troy's last big case was to protect the Russian leaders, Bulganin and Khrushchev, on their first visit to Britain in 1956. Now a series of increasingly sadistic murders occurs on his old East End patch; a wartime girlfriend, who became a GI bride - since married to a Democratic Presidential candidate - reappears into his life. Nor is she the only woman to occupy his bed. When 'Ike', the retiring US President, makes a farewell visit to London, all Troy's worlds combine in a frightening cresendo of corruption and violence.

John Lawton was a TV producer, and is now a full-time writer. He lives in a hilltop village in the Derbyshire Pennines.