Police Sergeant William South has a good reason to shy away from murder investigations: he is a murderer himself.
**Longlisted for the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year
A methodical, diligent, and exceptionally bright detective, South is an avid birdwatcher and trusted figure in his small town on the rugged Kentish coast. He also lives with the deeply buried secret that, as a child in Northern Ireland, he may have killed a man. When a fellow birdwatcher is found murdered in his remote home, South's world flips.
The culprit seems to be a drifter from South's childhood; the victim was the only person connecting South to his early crime; and a troubled, vivacious new female sergeant has been relocated from London and assigned to work with South. As our hero investigates, he must work ever-harder to keep his own connections to the victim, and his past, a secret.
The Birdwatcher is British crime fiction at its finest; a stirring portrait of flawed, vulnerable investigators; a meticulously constructed mystery; and a primal story of fear, loyalty and vengeance.
1969. Five years ago, teenager Alexandra Tozer was murdered. Her sister Helen Tozer will never forget. Returning home after quitting the Met Police, she brings with her the recovering Detective Sergeant Cathal Breen, who slowly becomes possessed by the unsolved case. But Breen is on a trail, for the two men connected to this case met in Kenya, during the Mau Mau uprising; and the history that Britain has turned its face from is now returning to haunt it.
London, 1968. A young woman is found naked and strangled in an alley in well-to-do St John's Wood. The neighbours would love to pin it on the enigmatic black stranger who has just moved in. Detective Sergeant Cathal Breen is convinced there's more to the case than anyone wants to admit; no-one's listening. In walks WPC Helen Tozer - awkward chatterbox, farmgirl, and the first woman to enter the murder unit - and gives Breen a breakthrough.
In Breen and Tozer's London, a battle for the soul of the city is being fought between cops and criminals, the corrupt and the corruptible.
London, November 1968. Detective Sergeant Breen has a death threat in his inbox and a mutilated body on his hands. The dead man was the wayward son of a rising politician and everywhere Breen turns to investigate, he finds himself obstructed and increasingly alienated. Breen begins to see that the abuse of power is at every level of society. And when his actions endanger those at the top, he becomes their target. Out in the cold, banished from a corrupt and fracturing system, Breen is finally forced to fight fire with fire.
William Shaw paints the real portrait of London's swinging sixties. Authentic, powerful and poignant, The Kings of London reveals the shadow beyond the spotlight and the crimes committed in the name of liberation.
Marylebone, November 1968. Detective Sergeant Breen has a death threat and two burned bodies on his hands. One is an un-mourned vagrant; the other the son of a politician. One case suffers the apathy of the police; the other obstructed by a PR-conscious father. Then the potential perpetrator of his death threats is murdered. Banished from a corrupt system, Breen is finally forced to fight fire with fire.
London, 1968: The body of a teenage girl is found just steps away from the Beatles' Abbey Road recording studio.
The police are called to a residential street in St John's Wood where an unidentified young woman has been strangled. Detective Sergeant Cathal Breen believes she may be one of the many Beatles fans who regularly camp outside Abbey Road Studios. With his reputation tarnished by an inexplicable act of cowardice, this is Breen's last chance to prove he's up to the job.
Breen is of the generation for whom reaching adulthood meant turning into one's parents and accepting one's place in the world. But the world around him is changing beyond recognition. Nothing illustrates the shift more than Helen Tozer, a brazen and rambunctious young policewoman assisting him with the case. Together they navigate a world on edge, where conservative tradition gives way to frightening new freedoms--and troubling new crimes.
