Audiobooks by Phil Lecomber

Sherlock Holmes and the Vanishing Girls of West Ham

"A fiendish, twisty London-set mystery, based on real-life unsolved crime, that sees Holmes and Watson trawl the shabby districts of the East End as they try to uncover who is snatching girls from the streets, and why. It is 15 February 1890, and Doctor Watson receives a summons from his old friend Sherlock Holmes, telling him to meet him in West Ham, a shabby district of East London. When Watson arrives at a disused property on West Street, he is met by Holmes, Inspector Lestrade and Lestrade’s former protégé Inspector Drake, who now heads up the Metropolitan Police’s K Division, which oversees the district of Stepney. In the house, Drake leads them to a cupboard in which is concealed the partially decomposed body of a girl. He tells them he’s pretty sure it’s Amelia Jeffs, a 14 year old from West Street who disappeared a couple of weeks ago on her way to buy a fried-fish supper for her family. After Watson confirms the girl has been strangled and estimates she was killed around two weeks ago, Drake reveals that two other teenage girls from the same street, Mary Seward and Eliza Carter, disappeared in 1881 and 1882 respectively. This is the starting point for the great detective’s descent into a sinister world of child abductions, which always involve the victim being seen with a ‘hideous old woman’ prior to their disappearance. The investigation takes Holmes and Watson to some extremely dark places: to a post office in East London in which the body of a girl is found stuffed into a box; to the pubs of the East End, where rumours of a trafficking gang abound; and to the brothels of Belgium, where English girls who’ve been snatched from the streets are put to work against their will. But will Sherlock Holmes ever be able to fully discover what really happened to the vanishing girls of West Ham, and solve one of Victorian London’s greatest real-life unsolved crimes?"

Phil Lecomber (Author), TBD (Narrator)

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The Devil's Banquet

"The second novel in the Piccadilly Noir series, this dark historical thriller sees Cockney private eye George Harley return to the streets of London's Soho, populated by gangsters, wide boys and lowlifes, to investigate a missing cabaret dancer and a child believed stole by his nemesis, the child murderer and occultist Professor Morkens. For fans of Dominic Nolan and Laura Shepherd Robinson. Four years after bringing the infamous child-killer known as the 'Nursery Butcher' to justice - and still haunted by the brutal vengeance exacted by the psychopath's ruthless allies - Cockney private eye George Harley is finally back in business, operating a new detective agency in the heart of London's Soho. Harley and his new assistant Bunty are presented with their first case when a distressed father engages them to investigate the disappearance of his daughter, who has run away from home to join a cabaret troupe led by the notorious 'Queen of Depravity' Ilse Blau, now in London after being driven out by the Nazis from Weimar-era Berlin. But in Harley's liminal world, things are never straightforward, and the detective soon finds himself embroiled in another pitch-dark scenario, with London's decadent, thrill-seeking gentry on one side and West End mobsters and wide-boys in search of easy cash on the other. When he discovers that a six-year-old has been kidnapped from an orphanage, Harley is convinced his old nemesis has somehow broken out of the lunatic asylum and is back on the streets of London, up to his old tricks. Set in 1933 and following on from the events of Midnight Streets, this second instalment in the Piccadilly Noir series sees George Harley return to the frowzy alleyways and sleazy nightclubs of the UK capital in search of answers - no matter how uncomfortable they might turn out to be. But when he becomes ensnared in the mind games of a wily femme fatale, and finds himself up against ruthless Glaswegian gangsters, well-connected occultists, and undercover SS agents, those answers become increasingly hard to find."

Phil Lecomber (Author), Colin Mace (Narrator)

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Midnight Streets

"The Long Firm meets The Big Sleep in this dark thriller set in 1920s Soho. George Harley is a cockney private detective in late 1920s London. While investigating a series of grisly murders he uncovers a trail of hidden clues, linking the crimes to an infamous figure from the past. Convinced that the police have the wrong man, Harley must use all his skills negotiating the dark underbelly of the city to track down the real killer. The investigation leads to a clash with an occult mastermind, an encounter which will have dire consequences for the rest of his life."

Phil Lecomber (Author), Colin Mace (Narrator)

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