Created by Phil Lecomber
“Whisky and a splash, please.”
So, while the likes of Race Williams, The Continental Op and Sam Spade were going down those pre-Chandler mean streets of 1920s America and kicking butt in the pages of Black Mask, across the pond low-rent hard man and private investigator GEORGE HARLEY was plying his trade in London’s bustling Soho district. It’s a rough, working class warren of immigrants, hookers, punters, pimps, scam artists, wide boys and gangsters, all of assorted ethnicities, played out against a backdrop of worn-down flats, drab nightclubs, shabby cafes and seedy pubs.
And no-nonsense George fits right in. He carries a “trusty brass knuckleduster” in his pocket, alongside a pack of Gold Flake smokes, a celluloid strip to open locked doors and a few other tools of the trade.
Midnight Streets (2025), George’s debut and the first of the proposed “Piccadilly Noir” series, is allegedly grim and gritty; a welcome corrective to a far less genteel vision of England usually portrayed in cozies of the era.
And even now.
UNDER OATH
- “Phil Lecomber’s jaw-dropping debut is exactly what I want from a historical hardboiled novel: passionate nihilism and a tough-as-nails loner making his way through a depraved underworld whose darkness goes all the way down. Actually, I’m lying. I didn’t know that’s what I wanted until Lecomber served it up to me in Midnight Streets, and I very much hope he has more in store for us.”
— Duane Swierczynski - “I’m a very forgiving reader, but this is the first book in years that I actually threw across the room. Not only was it a horribly overwritten pile of shite that managed to expand a 100 page story into 450 pages, it didn’t even have the decency to give us a proper ending! Seriously, this was AWFUL. Every sentence seemed like the author trying to say “Look, I know 1920s English slang!” when it wasn’t being overly explanatory, like every character was wearing a big “PREVIOUSLY ON” sign around their neck.
— Chris Gumprich
NOVELS
- Midnight Streets (2025) | Buy this book | Buy the audio | Kindle it!
Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.
