"Brian Sillito didn't expect drama to walk into his office unexpectedly that August afternoon in the long hot summer of 1959 ..."
Sillito is a former soldier who becomes a reluctant private detective when his ex-wife Mavis asks him to find Violet, their 16-year-old missing daughter. He involves Des Tyler, an 18-year-old junior reporter from the local paper. They trace Vi to a holiday chalet at the coast near Blackpool where she has gone with Craig, a young homosexual man, who is escaping trouble in Manchester. In the era of never having it so good under Harold Macmillan, homosexuality is a criminal offence.
When Sillito later reads a newspaper report of Craig's death beneath the resort's North Pier, he is convinced he was murdered.
His investigation uncovers blackmail and corruption of members of Manchester City Council by gangster Albie Fish, who runs a child sex ring from a country house in a leafy millionaire suburb of Cheshire.
Life gets even more complicated when the gangster kidnaps Vi to ensure Sillito's silence, as the reluctant private eye uncovers the truth, and an MI5 officer insists the scandal of the sex ring should be buried for reasons of national security because it involves influential figures from the police and judiciary and an MP who is tipped as a future leader.
All this plus teenage romance and rock and roll.
Genre: Mystery
Sillito is a former soldier who becomes a reluctant private detective when his ex-wife Mavis asks him to find Violet, their 16-year-old missing daughter. He involves Des Tyler, an 18-year-old junior reporter from the local paper. They trace Vi to a holiday chalet at the coast near Blackpool where she has gone with Craig, a young homosexual man, who is escaping trouble in Manchester. In the era of never having it so good under Harold Macmillan, homosexuality is a criminal offence.
When Sillito later reads a newspaper report of Craig's death beneath the resort's North Pier, he is convinced he was murdered.
His investigation uncovers blackmail and corruption of members of Manchester City Council by gangster Albie Fish, who runs a child sex ring from a country house in a leafy millionaire suburb of Cheshire.
Life gets even more complicated when the gangster kidnaps Vi to ensure Sillito's silence, as the reluctant private eye uncovers the truth, and an MI5 officer insists the scandal of the sex ring should be buried for reasons of national security because it involves influential figures from the police and judiciary and an MP who is tipped as a future leader.
All this plus teenage romance and rock and roll.
Genre: Mystery
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Used availability for Denis Kilcommons's Sillito