A House of Knives

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The decade is drawing its last breath. In Marylebone CID, suspects are beaten in the cells and the only woman has resigned. Detective Sergeant Breen has a death threat in his in tray and two burned bodies on his hands. One is an unidentified, unmourned vagrant; the other the wayward son of a rising politician. One case suffers the apathy of a depleted police force; the other obstructed by a PR-conscious father with the ear of the Home Office. But they can’t stop him talking to Robert ‘Groovy Bob’ Fraser – whose glamourous Pop Art parties mask a spreading heroin addiction among London’s young and beautiful – nor to a hippy squat that risks exposing it. Then the potential perpetrator of his death threats is murdered and Breen becomes a suspect. Out in the cold, banished from a corrupt and mercilessly changing system, Breen is finally forced to fight fire with fire. William Shaw paints the real portrait of London’s swinging sixties. Authentic, powerful and poignant, it reveals the shadow beyond the spotlight and the crimes committed in the name of liberation.