The Lesnes Penance: A Tom Ashford Investigation: 2

A contaminated street drug. A borough beginning to walk. A father running out of time.Four months after the events of The Belvedere Hum, DS Tom Ashford is still carrying evidence that could destroy careers-and expose the truth concealed beneath Crossness.Then a synthetic drug known as Still begins spreading through southeast London. Some users collapse. Others become violent. A few remain fully aware while losing control of their own bodies.Police and hospitals treat it as another dangerous batch of Spice, but the explanation soon begins to fail. The affected continue to deteriorate after the drug should have cleared. Pain no longer stops them. Separate victims begin following the same routes towards Lesnes Abbey, Erith's ancient churches and the machinery at Crossness.While Ashford's team traces the drug through stolen medical material, falsified waste records and an organised-crime operation in Thamesmead, the crisis enters Tom's own home. His sixteen-year-old son, Elliot, has been using a counterfeit THC vape and is further advanced than anyone realised.To save him, Tom must confront the people who buried the truth after Crossness. To save everyone else, he may have to accept that some forms of rescue are indistinguishable from harm.The Lesnes Penance is the second novel in The Belvedere Hum Trilogy: a dark British police procedural combining organised crime, family tragedy and cosmic horror rooted in the streets, ruins and hidden infrastructure of southeast London.