The Left-Handed Booksellers of London

London, 1983, a slightly altered version of the city. Susan Arkshaw has never met her father and wants to find him. Her best lead is the crime boss Frank Thringley, until Merlin, a young man with striking looks, turns him to dust in front of her.

Merlin is a left-handed bookseller, one of the fighting ones. The left-handed booksellers and their right-handed counterparts, the intellectual ones, form an extended family of magical beings. They run several bookshops and police the mythic Old World whenever it spills into the modern one.

Susan's search starts thinly: a list of surnames that may be misremembered or misspelt, a reading room ticket and an engraved silver cigarette case. Merlin has his own purpose. He wants the Old World entity that used ordinary criminals to kill his mother.

Merlin and his sister Vivien, a right-handed bookseller, follow the trail of a police investigation that was botched or buried years ago. Their path begins to cross Susan's, and the question is how her missing father fits into the death of Merlin's mother. The setting is an urban fantasy with a mystery at its centre.