Black Out — John Lawton

John Lawton's debut novel: a stunning, WWII thriller introducing Scotland Yard Detective Sergeant Troy. “A delightful, intelligent, involving book” (Scott Turow).
 
The first of the Inspector Troy novels, Black Out singularly captures the realities of wartime London, weaving them into a riveting drama that encapsulates the uncertainty of Europe at the dawn of the postwar era.
 
London, 1944. While the Luftwaffe makes its final assault on the already battered British capital, Londoners rush through the streets, seeking underground shelter in the midst of the city's black out. When the panic subsides, other things begin to surface along with London's war-worn citizens . . .
 
A severed arm is discovered by a group of children playing at an East End bomb site, and when Scotland Yard's Det. Sgt. Frederick Troy arrives at the scene, it becomes apparent that the dismembered body is not the work of a V-1 rocket. After Troy manages to link the severed arm to the disappearance of a refugee scientist from Nazi Germany, America's newest intelligence agency, the OSS, decides to get involved. The son of a titled Russian émigré, Troy is forced to leave the London he knows and enter a corrupt world of bloody consequences, stateless refugees, and mysterious women as he unearths a chain of secrets leading straight to the Allied high command.
 
“An exciting, fast-moving mystery set against the backdrop of the London blitz in 1944.” -- Booklis