It is the summer of 1969 the hottest, sweatiest summer in history, the American summer in the American year in the American century the USA is about to land a man on the moon and the Vietnam War is ripping the country to pieces, setting sons against fathers, fathers against sons. The Woodstock festival is in full swing and Norman Mailer is standing as candidate for Mayor of New York and against this backdrop, second rate detective Turner Raines finds himself investigating a series of murders that begin with the death of his best friend, a reporter on the Village Voice.

BLACK OUT is an outstanding debut thriller from a major new talent, featuring an original new detective, Sgt Frederick Troy, the son of a distinguished Russian emigre. Children playing on an East End bombsite during the Blitz find a severed arm. This is no ordinary murdur and Troy is soon on the trail of a german espionage network leading through a labyrinth of conspiracy and betrayal.

Joe Wilderness is a World War II orphan, a condition that he thinks excuses him from common morality. Cat burglar, card sharp, and Cockney wide boy, the last thing he wants is to get drafted. But, in 1946, he finds himself in the Royal Air Force, facing a stretch in military prison...when along comes Lt Colonel Burne-Jones to tell him MI6 has better use for his talents. Posted to occupied Berlin, interrogating ex-Nazis, and burgling the odd apartment for MI6, Wilderness finds himself with time on his hands and the devil making work. He falls in with Frank, a US Army captain, with Eddie, a British artilleryman, and with Yuri, a major in the NKVD, and, together, they lift the black market...

Ten years on from BLACK OUT, it is 1956 and the Cold War is at its height. For the first time, Soviet leaders (Bulganin and Khrushchev) visit Britain. The body of a diver is found floating near a russion ship at Portsmouth. Is this the excuse Bulganin and Khrushchev need to storm out and freeze the ColdWar still further? Cheif Inspector Troy, by parentage a Russian speaker, investigates ...

Berlin, 1963. East End-Londoner turned spy Joe Wilderness has had better days. He is sitting in a West Berlin jail, arrested for shooting someone he thought was about to kill him. His old boss, Lieutenant Burne-Jones of MI6, comes to Berlin to free him, but only under the condition that he rejoin British Intelligence. The knowledge that Wilderness gained of Berlin's underworld while working the black market just after World War II will prove useful to Queen and country now that the city has become the epicenter of the Cold War, dividing the world in two with its wall. On the other side of the Iron Curtain, another MI6 man, Geoffrey Masefield, is ruing the day he first agreed to be a spy....

Spring 1941. Britain, standing alone since Dunkirk; Russia, on the brink of entering the war; America, struggling to stay neutral. And in Germany, after ten years spying for the Americans, Wolfgang Stahl disappears during a Berlin air raid. The Germans think he's dead. The British know he's not. But where is he? MI5 convince US Intelligence that Stahl will head for London, and so recruit England's first reluctant ally into a 'plain clothes partnership'. Captain Cal Cormack, a shy American 'aristocrat', is teamed with Chief Inspector Stilton of Stepney, fat, fifty, and convivial, and between them they scour London, a city awash with spivs and refugees. But then things start to go terribly...

This will be sixth Troy' novel. The first was BLACK OUT, a W H Smith 'Fresh Talent' selection, but ever since although sales of Lawton have declined, his critical coverage has got bigger and better. What we are waiting for now is the first film. Columbia (producer John Caley) bought RIPTIDE and optioned the 'Troy' character. The good news is that the script is by a recognised wrier, Michael Hirst, whose ELIZABETH I (Cate Blanchett) won him a Bafta original screenplay nomination. I understand his script has been accepted. It is now a question of hiring the right director. Thus it would foolish, I think, to drop Lawton now. The new novel is the earliest historically. We are in the period...

Vienna 1934. Ten-year-old Meret Voytek becomes a pupil of esteemed musician professor Viktor Rosen, a Jew in exile from Germany. Three years later, aware that the Nazis are advancing, Rosen tells his promising pupil that he must leave Vienna for London. When Vienna quietly comes under Nazi rule, Meret witnesses the repercussions for the city's Jews, but when her orchestra becomes a division of the Hitler Youth, she complies and wears the uniform. Meanwhile, across Europe, Dr. Karel Szabo, a Hungarian physicist, has been interned in a camp on the Isle of Man. Shortly thereafter, Szabo is transported to Canada and rescued by the Americans, who recruit him to join the team in New Mexico...

Inspector Troy returns in this thriller set in 1963 - the year of the Profumo scandal, Kim Philby's defection and Harold Macmillan's resignation. Fighting ill-health, Troy finds his past catching up with him following a British traitor's defection to Moscow from Beirut.

The latest novel in a series regularly singled out for its exceptional quality features Inspector Troy of Scotland Yard in a tale of Cold War spy dealings centered around double agent Guy Burgess - a story of betrayal, espionage, and the dangers of love. 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 51st birthday: a whirlwind of restaurants, galleries, and concert halls from Paris to Florence to Vienna to Amsterdam. But Frederick Troy gets only as...