Dope

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.