Zippo

1976. Soho doesn’t sleep. It devours.

Xandra thought she could survive the theatre district by keeping her head down and her morals intact. She was wrong. When she refuses to cross the line into exploitation, the streets become her punishment. And in Soho, the streets are where women disappear.

Harry Sullivan is dying. The old newspaper seller has spent twenty-five years burying a secret that’s rotted him from the inside out. When he offers Xandra shelter above his stand, it’s more than kindness. It’s desperation. Time’s running out to make amends for sins she doesn’t even know exist.

They’re connected. They just don’t know it yet.

As violence closes in and fire erupts, the past Harry’s been hiding will explode into the present. What gets revealed in the ashes will bind two strangers together in ways neither could have imagined, and give them both a chance at the redemption they’ve been denied their entire lives.

This is 1970s Britain at its rawest. Strikes, corruption, exploitation, and the relentless grind of survival. No nostalgia. No romance. Just two damaged souls fighting their way out of hell.

If you love gritty British crime fiction, working-class heroes with nothing left to lose, and stories that hit like a punch to the gut, this is for you.

Richard Cave (British Army veteran, Paralympic athlete, and award-winning screenwriter) delivers a standalone novel about family secrets, second chances, and the brutal price of survival in London’s darkest corners.