Phil Lecomber
Author of Historical Crime & Noir Fiction
Dark, atmospheric crime novels set in the underworld of London's past
Represented by Watson Little literary agency
Upcoming Release
The Devil's Banquet
Titan Books
Piccadilly Noir Series - Book II
Coming June 2026!
It’s 1933 and Harley is back!
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 – 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 the seedy underbelly of Soho, things are never as they first appear. Our Cockney detective is soon ensnared in the mind games of a wily femme fatale, and finds himself up against ruthless Glaswegian gangsters, aristo occultists, and undercover SS agents. The office in Frith Street may be new – but it’s the same old dirty business for George Harley in: The Devil’s Banquet.
Praise for Midnight Streets:
“If you love Jake Arnott and Dominic Nolan, you will absolutely devour this!" - RAVEN CRIME READS
“A truly promising debut – highly recommended.” - CRIME TIME UK
“Heavy on atmosphere, packed with period detail” - CRIME FICTION LOVER
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PICCADILLY NOIR is a crime fiction series set in the late 1920s, featuring the private detective, George Harley. Although the milieu is that of the Golden Age of Crime Fiction, Harley’s world is a far cry from an Agatha Christie country house. Our working-class hero does his ‘sherlocking’ in the frowzy alleyways and sleazy nightclubs of London’s Soho—the city’s underbelly, peopled with lowlife ponces, jaded streetwalkers and East End mobsters.
"A walk on the wild side of 1920s London. Dark, atmospheric and utterly compelling." — Jake Arnott, bestselling author of
The Long Firm and The Fatal Tree
Unlike the American noir of Chandler and Hammett, PICCADILLY NOIR is a strictly British affair. It’s a world of grubby bedsits, all-night cafés, and Gold Flake cigarettes, where the villains are more likely to wield cutthroat razors than Tommy guns, and the wise-cracking Lauren Bacalls have been replaced by louche bohemians with belladonna eyes and ladders in their stockings.
"Lecomber’s jaw-dropping debut is exactly what I want from a historical hardboiled novel." — Duane Swierczynski, New York Times bestselling author of Lion & Lamb, California Bear and Secret Dead Men
PICCADILLY NOIR is as black as pitch, with a gruesome streak running through it—like a string of gristle in a dubious steak. Whether it’s dismembered corpses, occult sacrifices, or iniquitous conspiracies, Harley constantly finds himself embroiled in the macabre mysteries of a city whose sins are as dark as stout porter beer and where Truth is as murky as the mustard-coloured smog.
"If Patrick Hamilton and Dashiell Hammett got hammered in Soho, this is the novel they’d have come up with.
A cracking debut." — Martyn Waites, author of the Joe Donovan crime series
About Phil Lecomber
PHIL LECOMBER is the historical crime fiction author of the PICCADILLY NOIR series, an exciting new addition to the noir detective genre.
After decades working in London in various occupations—from construction worker, to expert in the security of the world’s most valuable works of art—Phil Lecomber now brings the city’s darker history vividly to life…