BLACK OUT

New York: The Times Book Club, 1995. 1st Edition . Hardcover. Near Fine/Fine. 8vo - over 7¾ - 9¾" tall. BLACK OUT - a thriller by John Lawton. It is his debut novel. The first of the Inspector Troy novels, Black Out singularly captures the realities of wartime London, weaving them into a riveting drama that encapsulates the uncertainty of Europe at the dawn of the postwar era. London, 1944. While the Luftwaffe makes its final assault on the already battered British capital, Londoners rush through the streets, seeking underground shelter in the midst of the city's black out. When the panic subsides, other things begin to surface along with London's war-worn citizens . . . A severed arm is discovered by a group of children playing at an East End bomb site, and when Scotland Yard's Det. Sgt. Frederick Troy arrives at the scene, it becomes apparent that the dismembered body is not the work of a V-1 rocket. After Troy manages to link the severed arm to the disappearance of a refugee scientist from Nazi Germany, America's newest intelligence agency, the OSS, decides to get involved. The son of a titled Russian émigré, Troy is forced to leave the London he knows and enter a corrupt world of bloody consequences, stateless refugees, and mysterious women as he unearths a chain of secrets leading straight to the Allied high command. CONDITION: Handwritten letter J in ink on free front endpaper. Scuff to top of the front cover. Otherwise excellent. A fine dust jacket, not price clipped.