Mystery crime fiction written in the Golden Age of Murder"[T]his period piece illuminates what it was like to try to investigate crimes during blackouts, when cops literally had to feel their way along their beats." —Booklist'For a scream in the early hours of the morning in Soho, even from a female throat, to stop dead in his tracks a hard-boiled constable, it had to be something entirely out of the ordinary.'In Soho during the blackouts of the Second World War, a piercing scream rends the air and a bloodied knife is found. Detective Inspector McCarthy is soon on the scene. He must move through the dark, seedy Soho underworld—peopled by Italian gangsters, cross-dressing German spies, and glamorous Austrian aristocrats—as he attempts to unravel the connection between the mysterious Madame Rohner and the theft of secret anti-aircraft defence plans.This evocative and suspenseful London novel from the golden age of British detective fiction is now republished for the first time since the