The Devil's Banquet

The second novel in the Piccadilly Noir series, this dark historical thriller sees Cockney private eye George Harley return to the streets of London’s Soho, populated by gangsters, wide-boys and lowlifes, to investigate a missing cabaret dancer. For fans of Dominic Nolan and Laura Shepherd Robinson. It is 1933, four years after Cockney private eye George Harley brought the infamous child-killer the ‘Nursery Butcher’ to justice, and he’s back in business operating a new detective agency in Soho. For their first case, Harley and his new assistant Bunty are engaged to find a young girl who has run away from home to join a cabaret troupe led by the notorious ‘Queen of Depravity’ Ilse Blau. But in Harley’s liminal world, things are never straightforward, and the detective soon finds himself embroiled in another pitch-dark scenario, with London’s decadent, thrill-seeking gentry on one side and West End mobsters and wide-boys in search of easy cash on the other. Returning to London’s frowzy alleyways and sleazy nightclubs, Harley will hunt down answers – no matter how uncomfortable they might turn out to be. But when he becomes ensnared in the mind games of a wily femme fatale, and finds himself up against ruthless Glaswegian gangsters, well-connected occultists, and undercover SS agents, those answers become increasingly hard to find.