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. Soho during the blackouts of the Second World War.

When 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 1950s, with an introduction by the award-winning crime novelist Martin Edwards."