Play With Fire

It’s the summer of ’69, and the hard-living rock stars of the British Invasion still rule London. When former Rolling Stone Brian Jones turns up dead, floating in the pool of his palatial home while the party continues around him, Detective Sargeant Cathal Breen is called away from his former partner, now girlfriend–who quit the force when she became pregnant with his child–to take the case.

Breen’s investigation soon uncovers another body spat out by the hedonistic ’60s party scene: a young woman, a call-girl for the rich and famous, a girl they called Julie Teenager. Her client list is thick and full of suspects–all rich, powerful, and protected. When Breen gets too close to fingering a financier with ties to Russia–and gets a phone call from MI6 warning him to watch his back–the investigation seems almost insurmountable.

But Breen has the keenly intuitive, deeply moral Helen Tozer at his side, who, despite her pregnancy, can’t help but be drawn into the case of a girl used and cast aside by London’s elite. Tense, dramatic, and with a blistering pace, Sympathy for the Devil is a gripping police thriller set in the darkly technicolor world of the 1960s.