This is a discussion of the transformation of drug use (especially morphine and cocaine, which was once commonly available in any chemist's shop) into a national menace. It revolves around the death of Billie Carleton, a West End musical actress, in 1918. Its cast of characters includes Brilliant Chang, a Chinese restaurant proprietor and Edgar Manning, a jazz drummer from Jamaica. They were eventually identified as the villains of the affair and invested with a highly charged sexual menace. Around them, in the streets off Shaftesbury Avenue, there swirled a raffish group of seedy and entitled hedonists. Britain was horrified and fascinated, and so the drug problem was born amid a gush of exotic tabloid detail.
- ISBN10 1862076189
- ISBN13 9781862076181
- Publish Date 1 November 2003 (first published October 1992)
- Publish Status Active
- Out of Print 26 February 2014
- Publish Country GB
- Imprint Granta Books
- Format Paperback
- Pages 208
- Language English