The monster's lament - Robert Edric

April 1945. While the Allied Forces administer the killing blow to Nazi Germany, at home London's teeming underworld of black marketeers, pimps, prostitutes, conmen and thieves prepare for the coming peace. But the man the newspapers call the English Monster, the self-procaimed Antichrist, Aleister Crowley, is making preparations for the future too: for his immortality.

For Crowley's plan to work, he has to depend upon one of London's Most Wanted, ambitious gangland boss Tommy Fowler, who, presiding over a crumbling empire, can still get you anything you want - for a price.

And what Crowley wants is a young man, Peter Tait, in Pentonville Prison under sentence of death for murder. Convinced of his innocence but unable to prove it, his only chance of survival lies in the hands of one detective struggling against the odds to win a desperate appeal that has little chance of success.

The Monster's Lament is an extraordinary journey through a ruined landscape towards an ending more terrible and all-consuming than any of its participants can have imagined. When you're used to fighting monsters abroad, it is easy to overlook the monsters closer to home.