Inspector Troy

6 primary works • 10 total works

Black Out

by John Lawton

Published 15 February 1995

BLACK OUT is an outstanding debut thriller from a major new talent, featuring an original new detective, Sgt Frederick Troy, the son of a distinguished Russian emigre. Children playing on an East End bombsite during the Blitz find a severed arm. This is no ordinary murdur and Troy is soon on the trail of a german espionage network leading through a labyrinth of conspiracy and betrayal.

Old Flames

by John Lawton

Published 22 July 1996

Ten years on from BLACK OUT, it is 1956 and the Cold War is at its height. For the first time, Soviet leaders (Bulganin and Khrushchev) visit Britain. The body of a diver is found floating near a russion ship at Portsmouth. Is this the excuse Bulganin and Khrushchev need to storm out and freeze the ColdWar still further? Cheif Inspector Troy, by parentage a Russian speaker, investigates ...

Little White Death

by John Lawton

Published 26 January 1998

At the country home of a Harley street doctor, the illustrious, the notorious and the ambitious gather for a house party. The resulting trail of broken lives and dead bodies leads all the way to the crumbling core of the British establishment. This time Fitz's infamous ability to ' mix it' - class and race, sex and politics - is about to blow up in his face. Left to pick up the pieces is Russian emigre Commander Troy, now senior detective at Scotland Yard. Addicted to drugs after a brush with the white death - Troy is up to his neck in scandal, personally and professionally. And the English can be so unforgiving of a good scandal...

Bluffing Mr. Churchill

by John Lawton

Published 30 November 2004

It is 1941. Wolfgang Stahl, an American spy operating undercover as an SS officer, has just fled Germany with Hitler's henchmen on his trail. He is carrying valuable cargo--the blueprint of the Fuhrer's secret plan to invade Russia. Stahl's man in the American embassy, the shy and sheltered Calvin M. Cormack, is teamed with a boisterous MI5 officer, Walter Stilton, to find the spy and bring him to safety. Their investigation takes them across war-torn London, from the shelled-out blocks to the ubiquitous pubs to the underground counterfeiting shops; and in Cormack's case, into the arms of Kitty, his partner's rambunctious daughter. As Cormack and Stilton close in on Stahl, bodies begin turning up--and the duo realize they may not be the only ones in pursuit of the spy. Someone, it seems, wants the German dead. When his partner is suddenly murdered in the line of duty, Cormack must turn to the ingenious devices of his lover Kitty's old flame--Sergeant Troy of Scotland Yard. Together, they investigate the trail of murders and are forced to ask themselves a horrifying question--are Cormack and his spy being played by one of their own in the American embassy?

Brilliantly re-creating London in the time of ration tickets and clothing coupons, Bluffing Mr. Churchill is a blistering page-turned peopled by magnetic characters.

Flesh Wounds

by John Lawton

Published 1 December 2007

Friends and Traitors

by John Lawton

Published 3 October 2017

John Lawton's Inspector Troy novels are regularly singled out as a crime series of exceptional quality, by critics and readers alike. Friends and Traitors is the eighth novel in the series--which can be read in any order--a story of betrayal, espionage, and the dangers of love.

London, 1958. Chief Superintendent Frederick Troy of Scotland Yard, newly promoted after good service during Nikita Khrushchev's visit to Britain, is not looking forward to a European trip with his older brother, Rod. Rod has decided to take his entire family on "the Grand Tour" for his fifty-first birthday: a whirlwind of restaurants, galleries, and concert halls from Paris to Florence to Vienna to Amsterdam. But Frederick Troy only gets as far as Vienna. It is there that he crosses paths with an old acquaintance, a man who always seems to be followed by trouble: British spy turned Soviet agent Guy Burgess. Suffice it to say that Troy is more than surprised when Burgess, who has escaped from the bosom of Moscow for a quick visit to Vienna, tells him something extraordinary: "I want to come home." Troy knows this news will cause a ruckus in London--but even Troy doesn't expect an MI5 man to be gunned down as a result, and Troy himself suspected of doing the deed. As he fights to prove his innocence, Troy is haunted by more than just Burgess's past liaisons--there is a scandal that goes up to the highest ranks of Westminster, affecting spooks and politicians alike. And the stakes become all the higher for Troy when he reencounters a woman he first met in the Ritz hotel during a blackout--falling in love is a handicap when playing the game of spies.

Blue Rondo

by John Lawton

Published 14 April 2005

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 was 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. 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.

Second Violin

by John Lawton

Published 9 August 2007

The sixth Troy novel. March 1938. The Germans take Vienna without a shot being fired. Covering Austria for the English press is a young journalist named Rod Troy. Back home his younger brother joins the CID as a detective-constable. November 1938. Kristallnacht. The Jews leave Vienna - Sigmund Freud with an American escort on a sleeper train, Josef Hummel tied to the underside of a boxcar. June 1940. Sergeant Troy is seconded to Special Branch to help in the round-up of 'enemy' aliens, among whom are Hummel and his brother Rod. Rod and Hummel are interned on the Isle of Man ...meanwhile a lunatic is killing rabbis in the East End of London. Troy asks for time off from Special Branch to return to his true calling ...Murder. London is now under siege, from German bombers, from its own prejudices and paranoias. Is London any better than Vienna?

Riptide

by John Lawton

Published 8 March 2001

John Lawton, whose first three novels featuring rising police detective Frederick Troy, set against real events (London in the run-up to D-Day in 1944, Khruschev and Bulganin's visit to Britain in 1956 and the Profumo affair of 1963 that helped bring down the Tory government), earned him critical acclaim, returns to WWII and three years before Blackout when Troy was but a Murder Squad Sergeant. It is April 1941 and Hitler is getting ready to invade Russia. In Berlin an Abwehr officer, Wolfgang Stahl fakes his death - he has been spying for the British - and flees to England before he is unmasked. In Scotland a plane lands carrying Rudolf Hess, Hitler's deputy, who is on a mission to negotiate peace. From Washington America, although not yet officially in the war, sends an intelligence officer to London to find out what's going on. In London Special Branch finds itself on the trail of Nazi assassins despatched to eliminate Stahl before he can spill all he knows about the German military plans for its Russian campaign. And when Walter Stilton, the Special Branch detective, is himself murdered, young Frederick Troy is given his chance.
As ever with Lawton's fiction the backdrop is real life and history. His chief inspector loses two sons when HMS Hood is sunk by the German battleship Bismarck, living through the blitz is chillingly described. The heroine is Stilton's daughter, a rampantly sexual red-head wpc. Lawton's new Troy novel also brings the welcome reappearance of Kolanciewicz, Scotland Yard's eccentric pathologist, and for those who already are her fans the first, if brief appearance of wise-cracking Larissa,, as yet only an extremely minor player in the Washington military.

A Lily of the Field

by John Lawton

Published 5 October 2010

"Observe in what an original world we are now living: how many men can you find in Europe who have never killed; or whom somebody does not wish to kill?' Vienna, 1934. Ten-year-old cello prodigy Meret Voytek becomes a pupil of concert pianist Viktor Rosen, a Jew in exile from Germany. The Isle of Man, 1940. An interned Hungarian physicist is recruited for the Manhattan Project in Los Alomos, building the atom bomb for the Americans. Auschwitz, 1944. Meret is imprisoned but is saved from certain death to play the cello in the camp orchestra. She is playing for her life. London, 1948. Viktor Rosen wants to relinquish his Communist Party membership after thirty years. His comrade and friend reminds him that he committed for life...These seemingly unconnected strands all collide forcefully with a brazen murder on a London Underground platform, revealing an intricate web of secrecy and deception. The ensuing events have personal significance for Scotland Yard Detective Frederick Troy. He finds himself pursuing a case with deadly and far-reaching consequences that ultimately threaten the balance of power in Europe.
Moving seamlessly from Vienna and Auschwitz to the deserts of New Mexico and the rubble-strewn streets of London, A Lily of the Field is a fast-paced, thrilling addition for fans of the series and a captivating introduction for new readers of Lawton's work."