Blue Rondo

The new 'Troy' from John Lawton is a gem. The backdrop is 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 (told in Lawton's OLD FLAMES) had been 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 in the tiny house in Goodwin's Court, St Martin's Lane. 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. The title, Blue Rondo, is taken from a Dave Brubeck record.