Second Violin (Inspector Troy Series) »

One of today’s top historical espionage writers, considered “as good as Le Carré” (Chicago Tribune) and “a master” (Rocky Mountain News), John Lawton adds another spellbinding thriller to his Inspector Troy series with Second Violin. The sixth installment in the series, Lawton’s new novel opens in 1938 with Europe on the brink of war. In London, Frederick Troy, newly promoted to the prestigious murder squad at Scotland Yard, is put in charge of rounding up a list of German and Italian “enemy aliens” that also includes Frederick’s brother, Rod, who learns upon receiving an internment letter that he was born in Austria despite having grown up in England. Hundreds of men are herded by train to a neglected camp on the Isle of Man. And as the bombs start falling on London, a murdered rabbi is found, then another, and another. Amid great war, murder is what matters. Moving from the Nazi-infested alleys of prewar Vienna to the bombed-out streets of 1940 London, and featuring an extraordinary cast of characters, Lawton’s latest thriller is a suspenseful and intelligent novel, as good a spy story as it is an historical narrative.

The Washington Post - Patrick Anderson

Second Violin, however, starts with the German invasion of Austria in March of 1938. The narrative proceeds to the onslaught of the Blitz—the massive, sustained German bombing of London—and the heroic defense put up by outnumbered RAF pilots during the Battle of Britain from July to October of 1940. If you are of a certain age, even the mention of those events is deeply moving. Never, as Churchill said, have so many owed so much to so few. It has been Lawton's achievement to capture, in first-rate popular fiction, the courage and drama—and the widespread tomorrow-we-may-die exuberance—of that terrible and thrilling moment in 20th-century history.