BLOOD MONTH (NOTTING HILL MYSTERIES Book 1)

‘Blood Month’, the first novel of ‘Notting Hill Mysteries’, an intended trilogy, sets a tone of high bleak humour in a style of low urban noir.

It’s bloody November in Notting Hill ...
There are murders, apparently random, but connected by a thread that bothers DCI Lucy Fox. She wants results, right or wrong, from her new investigation team. Under the police radar, the Larter family in Portobello Road is tearing itself apart in a fight for status and control of their criminal empire while negotiating with the rival Whitmarsh mob in Little Venice to take over and develop property along the Grand Union Canal.
Declan Larter, boss of the Barracudas, is losing control of the gang of gofers, feral teens in training, who hang out skateboarding by the canal. He doesn’t see DV, the most charismatic but the most dangerous of the murderous hoodies, coming at him. Neither does Nick Durie, a tenant of the house in Stanhope Road where DV finds an ambiguous sanctuary with middle-aged, alcoholic Caroline Muirhead.
The nightmare for Nick is about to begin with a mugging on a November night and a murder that attracts him to Lucy Fox who has more secrets than a fatal affair with Nick to hide from her own team. In the inevitable crash, no-one is saved: there are only survivors.
Along the canal, it’s November and it’s killing time …