“Last year I greatly enjoyed The Amateur Executioner, the first collaboration between Dan Andriacco and Kieran McMullen. It’s a pleasure now to welcome Enoch Hale’s second case, The Poisoned Penman (MX; 15 May), which begins in 1922 with the unexpected death of Langdale Pike, poisoned while taking tea with Hale. Pike’s specialism, you’ll remember from ‘The Three Gables’, was society gossip, but he seemed to have something more important on his mind. Hale’s investigation, helped by a clever advertising copywriter named Dorothy L Sayers, brings him into contact again with TS Eliot and Winston Churchill, and introduces him to GK Chesterton, Horatio Bottomley and Rudolph Valentino. Not unsurprisingly, both Sherlock and Mycroft Holmes have an important part to play.”

The Poisoned Penman is available for pre order from all good bookstores including Amazon USA, Amazon UK, Waterstones UK, and for free shipping worldwide Book Depository . In ebook format it is in Amazon Kindle and Apple iBooks(iPad/iPhone).