Amphetamines and pearls - John Harvey

Two novels introduce the violent mysteries of Scott Mitchell, the toughest detective in London, who taught the British Isles what it means to be hardboiled.

Amphetamines and Pearls marked the debut of Scott Mitchell, a down-on-his-luck London PI who ventures to Nottingham for the sake of an old friend, iconic singer Candi Carter. Mitchell finds Carter dead in her living room, a trickle of blood coming from her mouth and a bullet hole in her chest. Her body is still warm. But before he can get out of there, he's blackjacked, and when he comes to, he's picked up by a pair of cops who beat him senseless and drag him to the nearest cell. Mitchell is having a hell of a day-and things will only get worse from here.

In The Geranium Kiss, Mitchell takes a job from Crosby Blake, one of the most powerful men in London-and one of the most dangerous. Blake's niece, Cathy, has been kidnapped, and he wants Mitchell to handle the ransom payment. The kidnappers want 20,000, and about 20,000 things will go wrong before this case is finished. To bring Cathy home alive, Mitchell will have to untangle a web of deadly lies that threaten to bind him tighter with every question he asks.

Written in the hardboiled spirit of Raymond Chandler and John D. MacDonald, the Scott Mitchell novels are a unique hybrid of American and British mysteries. Created by John Harvey, who would later create the legendary sleuth Charlie Resnick, these novels are as tough as they come.