Playing with Fire

It’s 1964, and London is swinging, and nowhere is this more apparent than in the city’s Soho neighborhood, as shown in Hall’s solid seventh mystery featuring professional photographer Kate O’Donnell and her lover, Det. Sgt. Harry Barnard (after 2017’s Cover Up). Early one morning, Barnard answers a summons to Greek Street, where the body of a 15-year-old girl known only as Jackie has fallen from a window of the Late Supper Club. By the time he arrives, an ambulance has removed the body, and the club’s staff and patrons have vanished. Was Jackie’s death an accident or was she pushed? Meanwhile, Kate is contacted by a former boyfriend, who asks her to help him find his singer girlfriend, Marie Collins, who left Liverpool for London hoping to be signed by Brian Epstein, the Beatles’ manager, and has not been heard from since. Marie’s trail eventually leads to the Late Supper Club. Readers will enjoy Hall’s convincing picture of 1960s London, especially as viewed through the eyes of Barnard, a square copper who’s trying to come to terms with a changing society. (Dec.)