John Lawton’s debut novelfirst published by Viking in 1995, and nowbeing reissued by Grove Pressis a stunning, war-time thriller thatcements his place among the greatest crime writers of our era. The firstof the Inspector Troy novels, Black Out singularly captures therealities of wartime London, weaving them into a riveting drama thatencapsulates the uncertainty of Europe at the dawn of the postwarera.London, 1944. While the Luftwaffe makes its final assault on thealready battered British capital, Londoners rush through the streets,seeking underground shelter in the midst of the city’s black out. Whenthe panic subsides, other things begin to surface along with London’swar-worn citizens. A severed arm is discovered by a group of childrenplaying at an East End bomb site, and when Scotland Yard’s DectiveSergeant Frederick Troy arrives at the scene, it becomes apparent thatthe dismembered body is not the work of a V-1 rocket. After Troy managesto link the severed arm to the disappearance of a refugee scientistform Nazi Germany, America’s newest intelligence agency, the OSS,decides to get involved. The son of a titled Russian émigré, Troy isforced to leave the London he knows and enter a corrupt world of bloodyconsequences, stateless refugees, and mysterious women as he unearths achain of secrets leading straight to the Allied high command.