The Embassy Murders

London, early 1940. DCI Frank Merlin is called into a politically sensitive investigation after an émigré scientist is killed in a hit-and-run and a young American Embassy employee is found dead in the Thames. As further violence follows, Merlin’s inquiries lead from diplomats and Foreign Office officials into London nightclubs and criminal circles, while his superiors worry that questioning embassy personnel could damage relations with the United States.

The first Frank Merlin novel is set during the Phoney War, when Britain was formally at war with Germany but had not yet experienced the Blitz or the fall of France. Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. appears under his historical identity as the American ambassador, whose public pessimism about Britain’s prospects and interest in a negotiated settlement form part of the political background. Merlin and the murder conspiracy are fictional; the diplomatic setting and wartime tensions are historical.