London, 1919. Alderman Monte Irvin waits in his library, terrified his wife Rita is slipping into the arms of another man. But when he seeks answers from the enigmatic Kazmah, a dream-reader with connections to Limehouse's opium dens, he discovers his private nightmare is part of something far larger and more dangerous. The drug trade has come to England, and a young actress has just died of a cocaine overdose in circumstances that implicate powerful figures across the city. Sax Rohmer, creator of Fu Manchu, abandons his Oriental villain for something closer to home: a dark portrait of Edwardian London collapsing into addiction, betrayal, and blackmail. Based on the real 1918 scandal of Billie Carleton, whose death from drugs shocked British society, Dope is a pulp thriller with unexpected depth, capturing a moment when the empire's capital was learning to fear a new kind of vice. For readers who want their historical fiction with atmosphere to spare and their mysteries soaked in interwar dread.
